


Suspect Associates

by parisian_girl



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: Alternate Canon, Canon-Typical Violence, Case Fic, F/F, F/M, a bit of romance, and a bit of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-14
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2019-11-17 23:39:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 32,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18108854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parisian_girl/pseuds/parisian_girl
Summary: Female boxers, illegal betting, a missing person and a cold-case murder...and Mac is in a little too deep for Phryne's liking.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much to whopooh for being such a great beta on this! All remaining mistakes (and the terrible plot line) are mine. 
> 
> This is finished, so I'll try and update a couple times a week. Just prod me if I forget!

“Excuse me, Miss, it’s the Inspector on the telephone….”

“Oh!” Phryne started out of her chair, reaching over to place her tumbler of whisky on the table. She hadn’t heard from him for a few days, and she couldn’t deny the little spark that made her jump up at the mention of his name. She could see Mac smirking. She was prepared to ignore it, just this once, but Mr Butler shook his head.

“…for Dr Macmillan, Miss.”

“Oh.” She sank down, a little deflated, her brow furrowed as Mac swung her legs over the arm of her chair and stood up.

“Sounds like duty calls.”

Phryne huffed, but contented herself with listening vaguely to Mac’s side of the conversation, filtered through the hallway and the parlour door and made indistinct by the crackling of the flames in the grate. She was so used to Jack calling for her, now. A murder. A robbery. A kidnapping. A nightcap. The call asking for Mac instead had ruffled her somewhat, although she would never have admitted it, and another sip of whisky burned rather than soothed.

“Sorry, love.” Mac reappeared in the parlour, drained her whisky and pulled on her jacket. “It seems my patching-up skills are needed.”

“On a dead body?”

“If it was dead it could wait until morning. No, apparently a boxer’s gone and got herself beaten up a bit too badly.”

“ _Her_ self _?”_ Phryne sat upright, and Mac grinned down at her.

“Don’t tell me there’s something controversial and unconventional and verging on illegal that’s escaped your watchful eye?”

“No, of course not!” Phryne pouted indignantly. “I’ve heard it goes on. I’ve just never come across it before.”

“So what you and Emily Cook used to do in the back alley after school wasn’t boxing?”

“No.” Phryne gulped down her own whisky and stood up. “That was catfighting.”

“Fair enough….you don’t need to see me out, you know.”

“I’m not.” Phryne sauntered into the hallway. “I’m coming with you.”

“Phryne, there’s no crime scene.” Mac gratefully took the small cup of strong coffee that Mr Butler brought through from the kitchen and downed it in one. “Well, there is, I suppose, but there’s no mystery to solve.”

“But I’m intrigued nonetheless.” Phryne shot her friend a cheeky smile from under her black beret. “And besides, you might need an assistant.”

“You’re hardly dressed for it,” Mac murmured, her eyes raking over Phryne’s cream silk blouse and the long wool coat that she was donning against the September chill. “Blood stains, you know.”

Phryne didn’t answer, but instead held the front door open and gestured theatrically for Mac to go first. “Shall we?”

With a roll of her eyes and a barely audible groan, realising that resistance would be futile, Mac obliged.

 

*

 

It wasn’t a long drive to the sports club, a small, ramshackle affair down near the foreshore, especially late in the evening with little traffic, but it was long enough for Phryne to fire question after question at Mac, wanting to know everything her friend did about why she had been called out.

“The police raided the club.”

“After a tip-off?”

“Presumably. Women are allowed to train in boxing, informally. It’s discouraged but not illegal. They must have heard something about an organised fight or they wouldn’t have bothered with it.”

“And one of the boxers is injured?”

“Well, they wouldn’t have called me otherwise. You know there is such a thing as a speed limit along here?”

“Probably illegal betting too,” Phryne mused, taking a corner sharply and ignoring Mac’s intake of breath.

“That’s generally the point at boxing bouts…darling, I would quite like to get there alive.”

“Mac!” Phryne turned, her eyes wide, the picture of hurt indignation. “You don’t trust me?”

“I am currently trusting you with my life, that’s the whole point.” Mac reached over and placed a hand on the back of Phryne’s head, turning it until she was once again facing the road. “Eyes front. Keep them there.”

Phryne smirked, but obeyed. They drove in silence - and at a slightly lower speed - for the remainder of the journey, until she pulled up neatly on the side of the road behind the police car she now knew so well. The street was gloomy, grubby, dark save for the lights that now blazed through the club. She peered out of her window and read the sign. _Eddie’s Gymnasium and Boxing_. It sounded harmless enough, even if the paint had seen better days.

“Mr Eddie, I take it, is the club owner…come on. Let’s go and see what’s what.”

“Looks like a dive.” Mac sighed deeply as she opened the car door. “And I hope you’ve thought up a decent excuse as to why you’re tagging along. I don’t want to have to use you as an assistant if I can help it.”

“I’d rather you didn’t either.” Phryne smoothed out her trousers as she stood and waited for Mac to retrieve her leather bag from the backseat. “I’m rather fond of this outfit.”

“I was thinking more of the poor patient than of your laundry bill, but as long as we’re on the same page.” Mac grinned, and walked past Phryne to the door. “I’ll happily take bets, though, illegal or not. Black eyes or broken bones?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

Jack Robinson stood, breathing heavily after the tussle, and surveyed the club from the vantage point of a corner near the door. The place was in disarray. He and Collins had entered via the front, three other policemen via the back, just in time to see the last punch thrown and the crowd erupt in cheers. It was a baying crowd, he thought, howling for blood and money, and it had sickened him. The sight of long blonde hair being triumphantly pulled from its fastenings, the sound of a woman’s name being called as the victor, the faint scent of a woman’s perfume mixed in with other, more unsavoury smells…he could see the shock on Collins’ face, and he couldn’t blame him. He didn’t know himself how he felt about it, as a sport. What brought the bad taste to his mouth was not the idea of women boxing, but the sweat and lust and glee of the spectators, and the edge to the atmosphere that he knew wouldn’t have been there had it been men in the ring.

He had left the others to deal with the club owner, and with those who hadn’t managed to slip quietly away in the melee that had ensued after they had made their presence known. Collins was struggling with the victor, he could tell; his natural sense of decency was making him blush and stammer and, after an initial panicked burst, she was refusing to say a word. He sighed. He would have to rescue him shortly, but in the meantime he had the other woman to deal with. She was sitting on the edge of the ring, legs dangling from baggy silk shorts and her dark head down as she held one hand to her eye. Even through her fingers, he could see the bruise beginning to blossom across her skin. Scratches tore down her arms, and her hands were bloodied. He grimaced. Had they elected to take the gloves off themselves, he wondered, or had that been an extra special “treat” for the punters?

“There’s a doctor on the way.”

She nodded.

“I’ll need to ask you a few questions.”

She nodded again, but didn’t speak. He ran one hand tiredly over his own face, pinching the spot in between his eyebrows that always seemed to take the full force of an impending headache. This, he guessed, could take a while.

“Your name?”

“It’s on the flyers.”

He looked down; small pieces of paper littered the floor of the gymnasium. Promotional, he realised, since they couldn’t put posters up. He reached down and picked one up, smoothing it out with his fingers.

“Not ‘The Golden Girl’, I take it.”

“With hair this colour?”

“Ok then.” He turned to her. “I don’t want to know why they call you Calamity Jane, but I would like to know…”

“Whatever you want to know will have to wait, Inspector.”

He turned at the sound of Dr Macmillan’s voice. But what he saw wasn’t the redhead, her mouth set and her eyes steeled against the scene that had greeted her in the club. Instead, his eyes fixed straight on the woman behind her.

“Miss Fisher?”

She shrugged nonchalantly, her smile playful. “I gave Mac a lift.”

He shouldn’t, he supposed, have been surprised. She had a way of nudging her very expensive peep toe into almost every case that landed on his desk. He hadn’t worked out yet how she did it; so far, the most likely explanation he had come up with was psychic telepathy. Whatever it was, the more she did it the more he began to look forward to it. He appreciated her intelligence, her fresh eyes, and her unconventional way of looking at the world, just as much as the warm feeling that she always seemed to leave him with, the smile that she put on his face, the banter and the flirtation that he hadn’t indulged in for years but found that he actually quite enjoyed. Tonight, though, she had caught him off guard. 

“There’s no crime scene, Miss Fisher.” He moved a little to allow Mac space. “Well, there is, I suppose…” He glanced round at the gymnasium, noting that Collins was still preoccupied with the golden girl. “But there’s nothing for you to do.”

“Funny.” Phryne smirked. “That’s almost exactly what Mac said. And yet here I am anyway.”

“But I don’t think this is…”

“If you were going to say ‘a place for a lady’, Jack, I think you’re a bit late.” She looked pointedly at the boxer, whose hand was now being gently prised away from her bruised and bloody face by Mac, and he saw steel glint in those green eyes. Taking her arm, he moved them both out of the way, towards the wall where they could both survey the room better and let Mac work.

“I wasn’t going to say that. I was going to say I don’t think this is entirely straightforward.”

“Oh?” Those eyes sparkled up at him, her natural curiosity piqued even more. He swallowed. That expression was something else he had come to look forward to seeing at his crime scenes, although he would never have admitted it. “You mean beyond the fact that we’re dealing with women, not men?”

And there it was. So subtle he almost missed it, and he had to smile. “ _We’re_ dealing with, Miss Fisher? Last time I checked, this was my operation and my crime scene.”

“And now you have me along to help.”

“Ok.” He sighed. “Yes. Apart from that…minor detail.”

“But that minor detail is presumably why you’re here in the first place.”

He nodded. “Women aren’t prohibited from training in boxing. Most clubs don’t encourage it, and some have their own policies of banning women from practicing. But competitive fights between women are another matter.” He paused. “We received a tip off that this fight was happening. The club’s been on our watchlist for a while because of illegal betting on the men’s fights, we just didn’t have any evidence.”

“And now you do?”

“Enough.”

Phryne looked thoughtful. “So what isn’t straightforward?”

“Something I overheard her say to Collins, before she clammed up completely.” He gestured to the blonde woman. “She said they weren’t getting any money from it, so we couldn’t arrest her. And if you follow the letter of the law, she could be right. What constitutes a competitive fight for women is a bit ambiguous.”

“Ambiguous? Really?” Phryne took in what was left of the crowd and the state of the women. “if they _weren’t_ fighting to win, then I’d hate to see what they’d do to each other if they were.”

“Hmm.” He nodded. “But if they aren’t getting paid for it, then what are they doing it for?”

“There’s lots of reasons they could be doing it, Jack, not just for the money,” Phryne reasoned, but he could see her eyes narrowing a little as she surveyed the scene. “They might actually just enjoy it. It is a sport, after all, and men are allowed to compete.”

“I know,” he conceded, running a hand over his eyes again. Damn, his head was throbbing. “I just have a feeling. Something’s off.”

“So perhaps there is something for me to do after all?” Her hand rested on his arm. “Go and rescue poor Collins, she looks as if she’s about to eat him alive. I’ll stay with Mac and talk to this one.”

He hesitated. He had been rapped over the knuckles before, for allowing a civilian to assist in police matters, and the last thing he needed was more flak from the new Commissioner. But then again…this was Miss Fisher. Resistance would probably be futile. And besides, he found that he wanted her to stay.

 

*

 

It was strange, Phryne thought, that she had never really seen Mac work, not on a real live person. There had been plenty of dead bodies, and the occasional body part that had come adrift from its moorings. But she had never watched her friend doing, by her own admission, what she did best; treating the sick and helping the wounded. It intrigued her. Mac was her oldest and dearest friend, and yet here was a part of her that Phryne didn’t really know.

Now, though, as she watched and listened, concentrating to catch Mac’s soft tones, she found that there was something else to intrigue her even more.

“I would say it’s good to see you again, but I try not to lie to my patients.”

“Is that what I am now?”

“Well, considering you’ve been beaten halfway to hell and back…”

“…a slight exaggeration.”

“…I would say you are. Besides, I’m not sure one night qualifies you for much else.” But Phryne heard the hints of flirtation and challenge in her friend’s tone; hints that weren’t meant for her ears, but she knew Mac too well for them not to be obvious. She frowned slightly.

“Is that a challenge, Eliza - ouch!”

“Sorry, but you need to hold still, Martha. If that’s your real name?”

“Yes.” Martha lifted her eyes, deep blue and dark. “I try not to lie to my…”

Mac’s eyebrows lifted, continuing to clean the scratches that peppered Martha’s arm as she waited for her to continue; Phryne’s nose caught the harsh, sickly fragrance of antiseptic, and she grimaced in sympathy.

“You try not to lie to your doctor?”

Martha did smile then, and Phryne blinked. It lit up her whole face, the deep blue eyes coming alive and meeting Mac’s brief grin. Jack was right, she thought. Her instinct was telling her that this wasn’t a woman who did this for pleasure.

So what, Phryne wondered, was she doing here?

“And it’s only a challenge if you want it to be.” A little alarm bell went off in Phryne’s gut. She had known Mac for too long not to recognise the signs of what some people would call attraction, and what she had jokingly come to call _impending disaster_. “So why Calamity Jane?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Martha grimaced.

“I can’t imagine you lose every fight.” Mac, Phryne noted, was assuming that this wasn’t the first one, an assumption that was proved correct when Martha shook her head, shooting a glare over at her opponent.

“No, I don’t. My middle name’s Jane. _Martha Jane_ Cooper. Why my mother named me after a sharpshooter god only knows, but she did and the nickname stuck.”

“Ok. Can you lift up your arm for me?” Mac rested a hand on Martha’s elbow. “Just for those scratches under there…what happened to the boxing gloves?”

Martha’s smile disappeared, and she shrugged. The movement obviously pained her. “He’s going to find out anyway, isn’t he?”

“The Inspector? Yes.”

“It drives up the betting.” Phryne grimaced. She had thought as much. “One fight with them on, it gets them warmed up. Then they come off. Seems men like to watch women with their claws out. And…” She turned to Mac, her eyes a little fearful. “I don’t think I can. Lift my elbow, I mean.”

“What hurts?”

“My ribs.”

“Ok.” Mac carefully, gently, lifted the elbow she was holding until Martha hissed in pain. Her fingers probed underneath, and Martha yelped. “Sorry. You might have cracked a rib there….not helped by binding your breasts.”

“You try fighting with a French camisole on.”

“You could try not fighting at all.” Mac let Martha’s elbow go, and Phryne watched her brush back dark hair and tuck it behind Martha’s ear. She shot her friend a warning glance, but Mac wasn’t looking at her. “Why do you do it?”

“No offence, but I don’t think you qualify for that just yet.”

“Ok.” Mac sighed, and reached down for her leather bag. “I can’t do anything more here. You’ll need a visit to hospital so I can at least check you over properly.”

“No.” Martha shook her head resolutely. “No hospitals.”

“No choice, love.” Mac was packing her bottles and cotton wool back into the bag. “I can’t deal with broken bones by the side of a boxing ring.”

“You said it was just a crack!”

“Best case scenario.” Mac fixed her with a gaze that Martha held, blue on blue. “Worse case, you have broken ribs that will need a good few months to heal.”

“I don’t have the time for that.”

“Again, no choice. Not unless you want to do some serious internal damage.” Martha was silent. “Detective Inspector Robinson will need to speak to you, but I can arrange for him to see you at the hospital.”

“No hospitals.”

Mac sighed, and Phryne finally stepped forward.

“Miss Phryne Fisher.” She held out her hand to Martha, who took it with a furrowed brow and a surprisingly firm grip, considering her injuries. She hadn’t, Phryne realised, been aware of her presence. “Mac, can you do anything back at the house?” Something told her that if Martha was refusing to go to hospital, she wouldn’t be so keen on the police station either. Getting her to talk would be hard enough, and she wondered, briefly and with a vague frown, if it wouldn’t be easier at Wardlow with Mac there too. She glanced over at Jack. He would have his hands full for a while anyway.

She pursed her lips, a second’s distraction and concern. She knew Mac was professional. But still…

Mac considered. “I could at least take the binding off, I suppose. See a bit better what’s what.”

“So that’s settled, then.” Phryne nodded, pushing her concerns to the back of her mind. “I’ll clear it with Inspector Robinson, and you can come back to Wardlow instead of the station or hospital. For now.”

“Thank you.” Martha’s relieved sigh was audible, but Phryne interrupted.

“For now. If Mac finds you need to go to hospital after further examination, then you’ll go to hospital. Clear?”

A moment’s hesitation, and then Martha nodded mutely. 

“Good. And Inspector Robinson will be talking to you at some point.”

“Fine.”

With a last look at Mac, Phryne walked away, over to where Jack was finishing up with the other boxer.

“Anything?” He looked tired, she thought, and sounded exhausted.

“Well, Mac knows her.” He raised one eyebrow, and Phryne shrugged. “Don’t ask, don’t tell. At least not yet. She’s coming back to Wardlow.”

“Who, Dr Macmillan?”

“And Martha.” She saw his brow furrow and his mouth open halfway; it was almost comical, she thought, watching his objections make themselves plain on his face before his mouth closed again and he shrugged. Evidently, he had decided that arguing would be more trouble than it was worth.

“I suppose it’s more comfortable than the station.”

“Did you get anything out of the other one?” She glanced over to where Collins was now busy taking a statement from one of the spectators. “Poor Hugh looks like he’s been put through the wringer.”

“He has.” Jack nodded, and they shared a small smile. It left a warmth in the pit of Phryne’s stomach that was becoming all too familiar, by now. Every time she tried to ignore it, but every time it was there, intimate and knowing. “She’s a regular. Apparently they both are. Name of Anna Louise Cooper.”

“Cooper?” Phryne looked up at him in surprise. “Martha’s surname is….” She trailed off, her eyes shifting to first the blonde woman - Anna - and then back to Martha, now being helped down from her ringside perch by Mac. Yes, despite the different hair colour there was something….perhaps the nose, or the line of the jaw…. “Cooper.”

She looked back to Jack. His eyes widened a little, and she saw her own shock reflected in them as it dawned.

“They’re sisters, Jack.”


	3. Chapter 3

A merry fire was still burning away in the grate, warming the room and making shadows dance across the mantel. The curtains were snugly drawn. Phryne’s parlour always invited relaxation, confidences, shared smiles and laughter, and Mac felt a little rueful as she switched on the harsher overhead light. She wasn’t here for any of that this time, although she couldn’t help wishing she was.

“How do you and Miss Fisher know each other?”

Mac walked over to the chaise and knelt down by Martha, now sitting bolt upright, her face taut with pain. She looked so different without the makeup, the heels, the silky dress, but there was still the same spark of strength and vivacity, the same hint of beauty. It was partly what had attracted Mac in the first place, through the smoky haze of the club. Was it only a week ago? It felt like longer, but then, she hadn’t expected to see Martha again. When she hadn’t called, Mac had reluctantly put it down to experience. Another one of those times where intimacy and indifference made strange but comfortable bedfellows, and she had retreated to her usual nights of whisky and work instead.

“Phryne?” She glanced back at the closed door. Phryne was in the kitchen along with Mr Butler and Dot, filling them in on developments while they awaited Jack’s arrival. “We’ve been friends for a long time.”

“Is that all?”

Mac froze for a second before taking up the scissors. As the blades sliced cleanly through the fabric of Martha’s singlet-type top - it had seemed like the easiest way to get it off - she heard Phryne’s murmured warnings ringing clearly in her mind.

_“Do all patients of yours get this bedside manner?”_

_“All my patients get the care and attention they deserve, yes.”_

_“You know what I mean.”_

_“Do I?”_

_“Be careful, Mac.”_

“Why do you want to know?” One final cut, and the top hung open down one side.

“Jealousy.” Mac caught the faint teasing smirk. “And I like to know who I’m sharing my lovers with.”

“Phryne and I are just friends.” Mac helped her slip the top off, and winced as she saw the full extent of the bruising around Martha’s ribs. “But since you hadn’t called…”

“I was otherwise engaged.”

“Obviously.” Mac sighed, tracing the injuries with her eyes. “I know you said it’s none of my business, but why?”

“Why do you do what you do, Elizabeth?”

Mac looked up and rocked slowly back on her heels. Martha’s question, she saw, was serious. There was no flirtation, and she hesitated.

“No one’s ever asked me that before.” Martha waited, quiet, and Mac shrugged. Why did she do it? “I don’t really know. I was good at science.”

“Lots of women are, and they end up becoming secretaries.”

Sad, Mac thought, but true, and the unspoken question of why she hadn’t done the same hung in the air. “I couldn’t type.” The idea of her sitting behind a desk all day, most likely working for a man, was laughable. “And I had something to prove, I suppose.” She couldn’t have said what that ‘something’ was, only that it had driven her, above and sometimes beyond all reason.

“And you care about people. You want to help."

“That too.”

“That first. I can tell.” There was a pause, a moment of silence only broken by the flames crackling lightly in the fireplace. “We’re both women fighting in worlds dominated by men, Elizabeth.” Martha’s voice was quiet, distant. “I’m sure you’ve taken the equivalent of a few punches in your time.”

“True.”

“Can that be enough for the moment?”

The soft plea hung, suspended in the air. Mac felt warm, not as uncomfortable as she should have been under Martha’s gaze, but sensitive to the intimate atmosphere that had somehow flowered once more between them. Phryne was right, she thought. She should be careful.

“It won’t be enough for Inspector Robinson.”

Martha shrugged. “It’s a hobby.”

“Is that the official version?”

“Please.” Martha whispered now. “It hurts.”

“Okay, love.” Mac shifted forwards, her fingers moving to the bandage that wound tightly around the other woman’s chest. “Can you help me loosen this?”

“It’s hurting to breathe.”

“I know”, Mac soothed. Martha managed to slip her top off, down the arm that wasn’t so bad, and Mac found the spot where the bandage was fastened. “I might need to take it off.” She was concentrating now, focused, channeling a niggling anger with herself for getting distracted and not doing this immediately. “I can’t feel the ribs properly with it on.”

“Just do what you need to.”

There were yards of it, cotton braids that wound around and through and under and over each other. Mac didn’t think she had ever seen anything so intricate that wasn’t one of Phryne’s dresses and she muttered as much, causing Martha to giggle and then wince in pain. When it was finally all off, pooling in a heap on Martha’s lap, the murmur of relief was unmistakeable.

“Does this hurt?” Mac probed a rib gently, and Martha nodded. 

“A little.”

“And here?”

“A little…”

“And here?”

“Ouch!”

“Ok.”

Mac settled down to let her hands do what they did best; feeling, discerning, discovering. She always found that she could see it in her mind, the intricate map that was the human body, and even when it was battered and broken and torn it made sense to her. She could read it, far better than anything else. It fascinated her in a way that nothing else did. And she could lose herself in it, far more effectively, almost, than in a bottle of whisky or pair of deep blue eyes.

Finally, she sat back and reached for her bag.

“I think it’s just badly bruised.” She found what she was looking for - a rather pathetic looking jar of arnica ointment and another vial of painkiller. There wasn’t a lot else she could do. “You will need to rest properly, though. Let it heal.”

“I can’t.”

“Yes, you can.” She reached for the discarded top and laid it over Martha’s bare shoulders, dabbed some of the ointment onto her finger, and began smoothing it gently over Martha’s skin. Her fingers remembered it. Pale. Soft. Well-cared for, apart from the battering it had taken. “If you fight again and it takes another beating like that, the best that will happen is you’ll break the ribs completely.”

“And the worst?”

“If it breaks, then there’s the risk of internal damage.” Mac decided there was no point in sugaring it over. “It could puncture a lung.”

“I take it that’s bad.”

Mac raised one eyebrow. “Very bad.” She paused in her administrations. “It could kill you. But you know that. You’re a clever woman.”

“How long?”

“As long as it takes.”

Martha sighed, and Mac fixed her with a stern gaze. “I’m serious.”

“I know. I’ll try.”

“Is that as good as I’m going to get?”

Martha nodded and smiled, opened her mouth and hesitated. “I didn’t mean to pry earlier. When I asked about Miss Fisher.”

“It’s fine.” The change of subject caught Mac by surprise a little, but she covered it by concentrating on screwing the top back on the jar of arnica. “You weren’t the first and you certainly won’t be the last.”

“It’s just you two are obviously so close, and she didn’t need to help me tonight.”

“Phryne’s like that.”

“Then I wish I had a friend like her.”

“Mac?” It was Phryne, her knock sharp, and Mac smiled.

“Speak of the devil.”

“The Inspector’s here.” Phryne’s voice echoed softly around the crack she had opened in the door. “If Martha’s up to it tonight and doesn’t need the hospital, he’d like a few words.”

Mac raised one eyebrow at Martha, who nodded. She looked surprised, grateful at even being offered a chance to put things off, but also determined, and Mac felt her stomach twist a little.

“Fine.” Mac stood up. “We’re just about done.”

“Good.” A hand appeared round the door, clutching a silk wrap. “In that case, you might need this.”

Mac stood up to take it. The wrap replaced Martha’s torn top, her fingers slowly tying the fastening and smoothing over the fabric; they shook a little, and Mac took a deep breath. 

“Do you want me to stay?”

“Yes.” Martha’s voice was quiet. She wouldn’t have asked, Mac knew, and it was obvious what it took for her to say it. “If you can…please.”

 

*

 

“So, Miss Cooper. Would you care to tell me why you were fighting your sister tonight?”

The scene, Phryne thought, was so familiar. Mac in her armchair, Jack leaning against her mantel. Her colleagues, and her family. Except this time there was another element, one that she had also grown used to as she opened her home up to her work. Mac had done a good job of patching Martha up. The boxer sat on the chaise, looking uncomfortable and tired. But not so tired, Phryne suspected, that she would give them a straight answer.

“Don’t sisters fight all the time?”

None of them answered the attempt to deflect, and Martha shrugged.

“Luck of the draw.”

“Hardly lucky.” Jack shifted his stance. “You could have refused.”

“We could have, but we didn’t.” Martha’s eyes had drifted down to her feet, still encased in thin cotton socks and soft-soled boots. “She’s always keen, anyway. Or didn’t she tell you that?”

“She said you both fight at the club regularly, and train with the same coach.”

Mac made a disgusted noise from the armchair.

“He trains you both and then lets you fight each other?” Phryne couldn’t believe it, but Martha turned to her with eyes that said she should know better.

“Of course. He was the one who organised the draw. We’re both the same weight, roughly, and the same skill level. Not that you’d know it from tonight.” She looked momentarily furious with herself. “The other women who train there aren’t nearly as good. If we’re going to fight, we usually have to fight each other otherwise it’s not fair.”

“So how long have you been training there?”

“Didn’t Anna tell you all of this?”

“I want to hear it from you.”

“Did you tell her where I am?”

“I told her that you were receiving medical attention. She refused the same offer - since her injuries weren’t nearly as bad - and went home. The question, Miss Cooper.”

Martha sighed, rubbing her eyes carefully with her better arm. “About five years. It’s not illegal.”

“No, but competitive fighting is,” Phryne said quietly.

“What’s the point, then?” Martha looked over at her, suddenly impassioned. “What’s the point of training if you can’t use it? The men can. It’s not a problem for them.”

“Fair enough.” Phryne leaned forward. “But while you might be passionate about women’s rights, I’m having trouble believing that you’re really that much of a genuine advocate for boxing.”

“You don’t know me.”

“Call it woman’s intuition.” She risked a glance at Mac; the doctor, though, was focused on her patient. “And besides, you’re smart enough to know what the consequences are. Beyond the fact that it could get you locked up, how were you going to explain that to people?” She gestured to Martha’s bruised eye. 

“Same old story.” Martha shrugged. “A fall down the stairs.”

Phryne closed her eyes briefly. When she opened them, she saw Jack’s gaze on her; once again, his face was a mirror for what she felt.

“What about your brother?”

“What?”

“Anna said that you both live with your brother. Does he know?”

“It’s got nothing to do with him.” Martha’s voice was suddenly furious, her words clipped and panicked, and Phryne narrowed her eyes. She watched as Mac leaned forward to take Martha’s hand, but Martha seemed not to notice. She was staring at Jack as if challenging him to pursue it. “She shouldn’t have brought him into it. It’s not his fault.”

“That’s not what I asked, Miss Cooper.”

“Martha.” Mac’s voice was soothing, quiet, and Martha seemed to relax a little. 

“Yes.” Her eyes were still on Jack, her voice still guarded. “Of course he knows. He just understands that we aren’t his property and that we can fight if we want to.”

“Ok.” Jack paused, letting the moment pass. “What about the betting?”

“I don’t know.”

“You must do.”

“I mean, I know it goes on,” Martha clarified. Phryne noticed that she was still holding Mac’s hand. “It happens at the men’s fights too. But I honestly don’t know who organises it, or how it’s run. I don’t think it’s Eddie, he wouldn’t be smart enough.”

“So who else is a regular at the club?” Phryne asked. “Who else could organise it?”

“There’s…I don’t know.” Martha seemed genuinely at a loss. “I only really see the other women, Eddie occasionally, and my coach. The women can’t use the space when the men are there. We have a set time each week to train.”

“But you must have heard names.” Jack raised one eyebrow. “And I’ll take the names of the women too.”

“Glad to see we’re not being discriminatory here,” Mac murmured, and Jack shot her what Phryne could only describe as a _look_. She smirked.

“What about your coach?” Jack looked down at his notepad, although Phryne knew it was just for show. The only notes he was taking were mental ones, and his mind was just as good as the paper.

“What about him?”

“How long have you been training with him?”

“Five years. Since we started going to the club.”

“And has he always trained both of you?”

“Yes,” Martha nodded. “He trains the men as well, he’s the only coach there.” She looked up, and obviously saw Jack’s disbelieving look. “It’s a small club, and it’s not doing so well. Eddie probably can’t afford to pay anyone else. There used to be two, but the other guy left a long time ago.”

“Name?”

“Jamie Connolly. The one who left was Col Murphy.”

“And why wasn’t Mr Connolly there tonight?”

“He wasn’t there?” She looked genuinely puzzled. “But I saw him, not long before the fight started. I was warming up, and he came by to see how I was doing.”

“You weren’t warming up together?”

“Do you know any other fighters who would warm up together?” Martha demanded, her voice cracking now from tiredness. “Just because we’re sisters, it doesn’t mean that…”

“Ok. But did he say where he was going afterwards?”

“No. I just assumed he was staying for the fight like he usually does.”

Phryne caught Jack’s eye, and nodded almost imperceptibly. They would be paying a visit to Mr Connolly, and probably Mr Murphy too. Despite the circumstances, her stomach bubbled lightly, pleasantly, with the same warm feeling that she had had earlier, the same one that she always got when she realised that his case had become theirs and that they would be spending more time together. Doing what they did best, she reminded herself. Solving crime. But still, it made work a lot more pleasurable than it would otherwise have been.

“Can we leave it for tonight, Inspector?” Mac inclined her head towards Martha, who was beginning to look pale and exhausted. “I gave her some more painkillers earlier. She won’t be awake for much longer.”

Jack nodded, and pushed himself off the mantel. “I think I’ve got everything I need for the moment. Stay where we can find you, Miss Cooper.”

“I can have Cec and Bert drive you home.”

“That’s ok.” Martha pulled herself to her feet, but swayed on the spot and Mac caught her quickly. 

“Or maybe I’ll have Dot make up the spare room.” Phryne caught the other arm. “Dot?”

“It’s fine, really,” Martha protested weakly. “It’s actually not far from here, I can walk…”

“Don’t be so bloody stupid.” Mac shook her head as Dot appeared, wiping her hands on a tea towel. Her wide eyes took in the scene, and Phryne thought, rather proudly, what a long way her companion had come. Six months ago, and the sight of an injured woman about to pass out in the parlour would have sent her into a flurry of panic. Now, though, she simply raised her eyebrows.

“Yes, Miss?”

“Miss Cooper will be staying the night. Could you please help her upstairs and make sure there’s everything she needs in the guest room?”

“Of course, Miss.”

Phryne watched them go, Martha supported by both Dot and Mac up the stairs and through to the elegant guest room, before turning back to Jack with a sigh.

“Well, at least you’ll know where to find her.”

He was watching her with a strange expression that she couldn’t quite fathom. It was something, she thought, in between fond frustration and admiration, intimate understanding and disbelief. The frustration and disbelief were fair enough, she supposed. Not only had she gatecrashed his crime scene, she now had effective custody of one of his main protagonists. But the rest stilled her, and for a moment she simply held his gaze.

“Sometimes, Miss Fisher, you’re too good for your own good.”

“It’s late, Inspector. My brain is beyond unpicking riddles.”

He acknowledged it with that half smile of his, a smile that she returned. It felt so natural with him here. She was almost tempted to ask if he wanted to stay as well. It was late, after all, and he did look tired…

“So I’ll see you in the morning at the station?”

“Yes,” she nodded. The moment had passed, as they always did. One day, she thought, she would catch one of them. “At least we don’t have to pay a visit to the morgue this time.”

“Not yet.” She escorted him out to the hallway, and watched as he put on his hat and coat. “Where you go, Miss Fisher, a body usually follows sooner or later.”

“Jack!” She pouted. “That’s very unfair.”

“But true.” But he was smiling as he opened the door. “Until tomorrow, then.”

“Sleep well, Jack.”


	4. Chapter 4

It was nine thirty when he heard the clack of heels, light and determined and heading straight for his office. He smiled to himself. It was impressively early for her. He barely had time to push the lid back onto the biscuit tin before the door opened and she breezed in, all silk and linen and French perfume, and perched herself on the corner of his desk. She really was far too perky, he thought, considering the late night. Mr Butler must have made her some very strong coffee.

“Good morning, Jack.”

“Miss Fisher.” He nodded, trying not to let his attention wander to her legs, dangling temptingly in their stockings just out of the reach of his right eye. “How’s the patient?”

“Still asleep when I left.” She reached across him for the biscuit tin and he swallowed as the movement let her coat slip, revealing the red patterned blouse beneath. “Mmm, chocolate and…” She sniffed. “Is that a hint of coconut? You never fail to surprise me, Jack.”

“And why’s that, Miss Fisher?” He watched, slightly ruefully, as the second-to-last biscuit disappeared into her eager hand.

“I never put you down for a chocolate and coconut kind of man, especially not so close to breakfast.” She smirked through a full mouth. “Maybe something more traditional, like…I don’t know…toast?”

“Chocolate and coconut is quite traditional enough, thank you, and I didn’t have time for breakfast this morning.” He put the lid firmly back on the tin this time. “And we have work to do.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

The slow lick round her lips to catch any last crumbs was, he was quite sure, deliberate. He tried to ignore it, but for some reason he was finding that much more difficult than usual. Tiredness, he thought. He had barely slept.

“Our fighting duo?” She pointed to the thick file of papers that lay open on his desk, her eyes alert and her attention suddenly focused, and he nodded. It shifted so quickly, every time. From flirting - sometimes intense flirting - to professionalism, and sometimes he couldn’t keep up. One day, he thought, he would catch the mood before it changed. But for now…

“Something was bothering me last night.” He pulled the file towards him across the desk. “The name. Cooper.”

“It’s a common enough name.”

“It is, but it was Martha’s reaction when I asked about the brother. I hadn’t thought about it when Anna first mentioned him, but later there was something niggling.” His fingers flicked back to the front of the file. “And I remembered this.”

“The Robert Gordon murder?” Phryne’s eyes scanned the paper, her fingers trailing lightly down the page. “I don’t remember it.”

“It happened before you came back to Melbourne.” Jack pointed to the date. “1924. Robert Gordon was a dock worker, murdered in a back alley not far from the sports club. He’d been part of a gang smuggling drugs through the docks.”

“And things turned nasty.” Phryne flipped over a page, and grimaced. “Very nasty, by the look of him.”

“He started siphoning off some of the drugs from each shipment to sell himself.”

“These gangs don’t exactly encourage an entrepreneurial spirit.”

“Not exactly, no.”

“So what has this got to do with Calamity Jane and the Golden Girl?”

“One of the suspects at the time for the murder was one Benjamin Cooper.”

Phryne’s eyebrows shot up. “The brother?”

Jack nodded. “I think so. He was a supervisor at the docks. The police at the time were convinced that Benjamin was linked to the drugs but there was no evidence. The others - the ones that were caught, anyway - refused to say, and he had an alibi for the night of the murder itself.”

“But you’re not convinced?”

“The alibi was Eddie’s club.” Jack took the file from under her hand, and flicked through until he found the statement that he wanted. “And it was Jamie Connolly, the trainer, who vouched for him being there. Said they were training all evening. But they never did catch who did it.”

“And have you spoken to Eddie?” She jerked her head towards the cells, and Jack shook his head.

“Briefly last night. He’s squealing for a lawyer, and his lawyer can’t make it until this afternoon. We’re stuck with him for the moment.”

“So.” Her eyes were sparkling now, full of the thrill of something that intrigued her, and he felt a small surge of energy and excitement himself.She was infectious. “Who first? Mr Cooper or Mr Connolly?”

“Connolly.” He had already decided that, and she hopped down from the desk as he pushed his chair back and grabbed his coat. “And I’m driving, Miss Fisher. I would like to get there alive.”

 

*

 

“Didn’t turn up this morning.” The man aimed another high kick at the punchbag, held firm by his sparring partner. “No idea where he is, mate.”

“And how long have _you_ been practicing the martial arts?”

Jack rolled his eyes as he heard the silk in Phryne’s voice. Her expression was something in between a leopard on the prowl and a cat that got the cream, and he never understood how exactly she did it or how it worked. Her eyes raked up and down the half-naked bodies in front of them, muscles defined and glistening with sweat, and he could almost see the men preening in response. Was that really her type, he wondered? Or did she just save that look for certain circumstances? He had never noticed her trying it on him, that was certain, although she had tried quite a few others. 

“A few years.” The next blow to the punchbag was extra hard with one eye on Phryne, and Jack felt his jaw set at the blatant flaunting of what looked like, to him, a lot of brawn and not much talent or brain. “Got a bit of a name for myself, by now.”

“And what _is_ your name?” It was a vain attempt to steer the conversation back to where it belonged; out of the corner of his eye, Jack saw Phryne smirk as the man directed his answer to her, not him.

“George Doonan.”

“A pleasure, Mr Doonan.”

Was she actually _batting_ her eyelashes?

“And you are?” Jack turned his attention to the other man, shorter and darker than Doonan and all but obscured by the punchbag that he was still clutching, ever ready for the next onslaught.

“Jones.” The man’s body shuddered with the force of the last blow, before Doonan relented and waved at him to let the bag go. “Ralph Jones.”

“Why do you want Jamie, anyway?” Doonan wiped his forearm over his forehead.

“Do you know anything about women fighting here?”

He watched as the two men exchanged brief glances. 

“They use the space sometimes to play around in, but fighting…nah.” The reply was cautious, and Phryne pushed herself away from the wall that she had been leaning against, wandering over to stand closer, fingering the punchbag with a gloved hand. It hung impotently now from the ceiling, hard and firm under her touch. Jack waited. She would take this one.

“That’s strange.” Her voice was almost a purr. “Because we caught two of them beating each other to a pulp here last night.” She paused. “It was a massive crowd. I’m surprised you missed it.” Her eyes lifted coquettishly from the punchbag and rested on the George Doonan’s face. “So. The question again, Inspector Robinson? Perhaps rephrased a little. Our friends here obviously aren’t that bright.”

“Organised fights between women. Here.” He had to admire it. She was good. “Specifically the Cooper sisters. What do you know?”

Doonan looked as if he was going to argue but then thought better of it, shrugging his shoulders in a defeatist gesture. “I’ve been to a couple, ok? That’s it. They train here, but not with us. The women have their own time.”

“Do many women train here?”

“Five or six, I guess. It’s not exactly golf.” It was Ralph who spoke this time. They were, Jack thought caustically, quite the double act. If he hadn’t known better, he would have thought they had rehearsed this. “The Coopers are the best, though. They can really draw a crowd.” Ralph saw the look on Phryne’s face, and added hastily, “From what I’ve heard.”

“When you say they can draw a crowd…?”

“Eddie only charges a small entrance fee, but everyone knows if the Coopers are fighting the betting will be through the roof…he’ll find out anyway, George.” Jack rapidly decided that Ralph had the extra brain cell between the two of them. “You never know which one of them’s going to win, they’re so evenly matched, and they really go for it. I don’t know what happens to the betting money though.”

“Doesn’t all come back to the club, that’s for sure.” Doonan looked around with a disgruntled look. “Changing rooms are disgusting. Rat shit everywhere.”

“Thank you for that illuminating detail, Mr Doonan.”

“Are we almost done here?” Doonan’s eyes were still hovering towards Phryne. Jack longed to tell him that he didn’t have a hope in Hades, but decided against it. He was hardly one to talk.

“Just a few more questions,” he replied mildly. “Who organises the betting?”

The men exchanged glances again, but this time Phryne intercepted them.

“A straight answer would be appreciated, gentlemen. I have a lunch engagement that I would really rather not miss.”

“Jamie.” 

“So he organises the betting, trains the fighters, and then pits them against each other?” The disgust in Phryne’s voice was clear, and Jack couldn’t blame her. It reminded him of cock fighting, and that had always made him feel sick.

“That just about sums it up.” Ralph crossed his arms. “Anything else you want to know?”

“I think that’s all for now. I’ll be in touch if we need any further assistance.” He gestured to Phryne, but George Doonan stopped them.

“What will happen to the club?”

“I don’t know, Mr Doonan.” Jack turned once more for the door. Suddenly, he needed to be out of there. “I don’t know.”

 

*

 

“There’s no love lost between them, is there?”

“The sisters? Doesn’t seem like it.” Jack shook his head. He still felt vaguely disgusted by the whole thing, and he sensed Phryne did too. She was uncharacteristically quiet, deep in thought as she gazed out of the passenger window, and he wondered if it was the fact that they were sisters, or the idea that they were being taken advantage of. Probably both. He knew it wouldn’t be the boxing itself; Phryne would never be against anything in principle that put women on more of an equal footing with men. He wanted to reach over and squeeze her hand, to give her some indication that he understood, but instead he kept both hands on the wheel.

It was safest that way.

“Can I drop you somewhere?”

“Hmm?” She looked round, distracted, and he repeated his question. 

“Your lunch engagement. Can I drop you somewhere and you can pick up the Hispano later? I don’t think there’s much point in chasing Jamie Connolly now. I want to wait and speak to Eddie first.”

“No, thank you.” She shook her head, smiling. “There is no lunch engagement…or at least, there is, but it’s just Mac.”

“Oh.” He tried to ignore the little sigh of relief that wriggled in his stomach. Not, he thought sharply, that it was any of his business who she might choose to have lunch with. Or dinner. Or anything else, for that matter.

“She’s coming over to check on Martha.” Phryne paused, her fingers absentmindedly fiddling with the cuff on her coat. “I’m worried about her, actually.”

“Martha?”

“No, Mac.”

“Why?” He slowed down as they approached a junction, his eyes flicking over to glance at her. She did look worried, her brow furrowed a little and her mouth pursed.

“She’s too close.”

“To Martha?” The junction was clear, and he pulled away. “Do they know each other that well?”

“That depends in what sense you’re talking about…don’t tell me you didn’t notice, Jack.”

He acknowledged it with a half smile. It was true, he supposed. Even he could usually sense when two people were attracted to each other. But if he was honest, he had been so focused on dealing with the fallout from the club that he hadn’t paid it much attention until now.

“Well, it’s her choice.” He risked another glance, a teasing lilt creeping into his voice. “She certainly wouldn’t be the first woman to sleep with one of my suspects.”

The eye roll he received in response was almost enough to make him laugh out loud. Had she realised, he wondered, that he did it deliberately sometimes? Not to provoke or annoy her, but to get that look. The one that said she should be angry with him for being so flippant but wasn’t, that she could give as good as she got if she chose to, that she would enjoy paying him back later. Somewhere along the line, he had started to genuinely look forward to “later” himself.

“What will happen to Martha, though?”

He shrugged as he turned onto the tree-lined street, and pulled carefully up outside the police station about halfway along. His neat turn made Phryne’s Hispano look even more haphazard, jutting out at a strange angle from where she had been a bit hasty in her parking. “Honestly? Probably not a lot, as long as it’s just the boxing she’s involved with. A warning.”

“Too much paperwork?”

“Something like that.” He caught her cheeky smile out of the corner of his eye, and knew she was thinking back to when he had told her the same thing. He had kept those mugshots. He still looked at them every so often, something which he would never admit to but which he suspected she already knew. “It’s the club owners who get the rap, usually, because of the betting.” He paused, turned to face her. “I know Dr Macmillan’s your friend and you don’t want her to get any more involved than she already is, but it really is up to her, Phryne.”

“I know.” Her eyes thanked him for the reassurance, even if it wasn’t, perhaps, what she had wanted to hear. “What time is Eddie’s lawyer coming?”

“Three.”

“Then I’ll see you later.” She swung open the door and exited the car with a flourish, not waiting for him to come around and open it for her. “Don’t do anything without me!”

“If only you gave me the chance,” he murmured as he watched her go, but he was smiling.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

“Mrs Dalloway, hmm?”

Martha dropped the book into her lap, and looked up with a guilty expression that relaxed as soon as she saw who it was. 

“You gave me a fright.”

Mac smiled, and deposited her bag on the floor. She had found Martha curled up in a chair in Phryne’s parlour, wrapped up in a blanket while she read. Dot had been apologetic, saying that Martha had been out of bed and downstairs before she even knew she was awake, but Mac had shrugged it off with a smile. She could well imagine that Martha didn’t take well to lying around, and it sounded as if the chair and the blanket were the biggest compromise that Dot had been able to wangle.

“How are you feeling?”

“Fine.”

Mac raised one eyebrow, and waited.

“I have a headache.” The admission was grudging, and Mac waited again. “And my side is a bit sore.”

“I’m not surprised.” She stood by the chair and tilted Martha’s chin up, gently pulling back the eyelids. The bruised eye, she saw, had swelled overnight, leaving a lump that was roughly the size and shape of an angry boiled egg. “Any nausea? Dizziness?”

Martha hesitated before nodding. “I was a little dizzy earlier. It’s passed, though.”

“Ok. Watch my finger.” Mac held up her free index finger and moved it slowly backwards and forwards in front of Martha’s face, watching the other woman’s eyes follow it. They seemed lighter than last night; more like the ocean, mixed with grey and flecked with green depending on which way you looked. She was aware, too, of her touch on Martha’s face. The soft curve of the jaw, the strong cheekbones. Dark hair that was slightly longer than Phryne’s, soft and sleek but with a hint of wavy rebellion, and the small, compact body that seemed even smaller in the daylight, swamped by the armchair and the blanket. She felt like a flame under Mac’s hands. “You may have a touch of concussion.”

“So what does that mean?”

Mac let go and stepped back, taking the other armchair as Dot bustled in with more tea. “It means you need to be careful of your head as well as your ribs, and it means you should be back in bed.”

“I need to go home.”

“Why, so you can give your sister a kicking in return?”

“Something like that.” Martha smirked at Mac over the rim of her teacup. “Do you blame me?”

“I’ve never had the pleasure of a sister, so I wouldn’t know.” She stirred a half-spoonful of sugar slowly into her tea. “Do you need to telephone her? Let her know where you are?”

“No. Why, are you going to keep me here?” Martha’s grin had turned flirtatious again, and Mac reluctantly acknowledged the return of the little flicker of warmth in her stomach, the instinct to respond that had been absent for so long. Damn it to hell. Why did it have to be her? Of all people?

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“On whether you obey orders from now on and stay in bed."

The ocean in Martha’s eyes flickered and danced, and the teasing gaze held Mac captive. “Well, that also depends.”

“On what?”

“On whether…”

“Mac! You’re early.” They both jumped once more as Phryne breezed through the front door, bringing with her a gust of autumnal air and a whirlwind of activity as she tossed her hat on the hall table and sashayed through to the parlour. Martha, Mac noticed, looked guilty again, and tried to hide the book on her lap but Phryne’s eyes had been too quick. “And another Woolf devotee? Excellent. How are you feeling, Martha?”

“Uh…”Martha’s eyes flickered towards Mac, but Mac simply hunkered down behind her teacup, trying not to laugh. Phryne usually had far better timing than that, but perhaps it had been deliberate. “I’m better. Thank you. You didn’t need to do all this for me.”

“It’s nothing.” Phryne dropped down onto the chaise and poured herself some tea from the pot. “You’re welcome to stay as long as you need.”

“Thank you,” Martha said again, recovering her composure somewhat, “but I should really go home.”

“You should really be back in bed.” Mac emerged from behind her cup. “You have a concussion, or did you forget that already?”

Martha, she thought with amusement, would have stuck her tongue out had Phryne not been there. 

“Concussion too?” Phryne looked concerned. “Then you should stay and rest, at least for today.” She smiled conspiratorially. “And then you can finish the book.”

Martha blushed faintly, the colour highlighting her cheeks delicately against the violent purple of her bruises.

“So that’s settled then.”

“I…”

“Would you like some lunch?”

“I’m not really hungry.” Martha shook her head. “Thank you.” Mac watched as she pushed back the blanket and stood, a little wobbly on her feet and Phryne’s silk pyjamas hanging loose on her small frame. “You’re maybe right about bed, though.”

“I usually am.” Mac’s voice was quiet, but the slightly playful tone made Martha smile again and Phryne frown.

“Are you sure it’s ok?” Martha turned to Phryne again. “I can easily go home.”

“No more arguing.” Both Phryne and Mac stood up, and Phryne rested a hand briefly on Martha’s elbow. “Try and get some more rest.”

“I’ll come up with you.” Mac moved towards the door, but Martha shook her head.

“I’m fine, really.” She squeezed Mac’s hand, a flash of warmth that was quickly gone. “I just want to sleep.”

“If you’re sure. I’ll check on you after lunch.”

“Okay.” The warmth flashed again, this time in a smile. “Thank you again, Miss Fisher.”

“Phryne, please. And you’re welcome.”

Mac watched her safely up the stairs before returning to the parlour, where Phryne was leaning back on the chaise, teacup in hand, both eyebrows raised and wearing an expression that made her cringe.

“What?” Mac held up both hands in a gesture of surrender. “What did I do?”

“You’ve never offered to tuck me up before.”

“As far as I’m aware, you’ve never had concussion and a set of bruised ribs before.”

Phryne sipped her tea, her eyes never wavering, and Mac threw herself down into the chair with a sigh. Never mind tea. She needed something stronger. She needed a cigarette, at least.

“I can tuck you up if you like,” she offered. “Just say the word.”

“Perhaps another time.” Phryne’s frown dissolved into a chuckle, and she put down her teacup and held out her arms as if to a child. After a moment’s hesitation, Mac relented. Abandoning the chair, she crossed to the chaise and settled herself there instead. Closing her eyes and resting her head in Phryne’s lap felt good, the firm massage of her temples and forehead even better. Her legs were swung over the arm of the chaise, and she wriggled her feet, her whole body beginning to relax into the simple pleasure. She knew Phryne wouldn’t ask if she didn’t tell first, and at some point, she would. But not today.

“What’s been happening, then?”

“Well, the coach has gone missing.” Phryne sounded thoughtful as her fingers worked down Mac’s cheekbones. “Mister Eddie is apparently scared witless and howling for his mother and a lawyer, so we can’t interview _him_ until this afternoon. We want to talk to the brother as well, Jack thinks there might be a connection with an old murder case.”

Mac smiled. “You’re saying _we.”_

_“_ Of course, what else would I be saying?”

“Well…” Mac shifted a little so that Phryne’s hands moved back to her temples. “It is Jack’s case.”

“What’s Jack’s is mine. In a manner of speaking.”

“You two are like an old married couple. All of the squabbling and none of the sex.”

“Mac!” Phryne’s fingers slapped her gently, playfully, on the forehead. “We don’t squabble.”

“Oh?” Mac opened one eye, smirking.

“And not that, either.”

“Not for want of trying,” Mac murmured, closing her eye again and burrowing her head further into Phryne’s skirt. “Don’t think I don’t know why you came with me last night.”

“Jack is a…” Phryne paused. “A friend. A colleague.”

“Umm-hmm.” Mac let herself drift a little, the first delicious smells from the kitchen teasing her nose. “Whatever you say.”

“And besides, the words pot, kettle and black are coming to mind.”

“Wrong analogy.” Mac shook her head, even though she knew exactly what Phryne meant. “I’m not flirting outrageously with Jack, he’s not my type.”

“No, but you are with someone else.”

“I wouldn’t exactly call it flirting.”

“Then I’d love to be on the receiving end of what you _would_ call flirting.”

“Perhaps another time.”

Phryne snorted. “Mac. How long have we known each other?”

“Too bloody long, obviously.”

“Then you’ll know to believe me when I say that, whilst I can just about resist your considerable charms, other women have a harder time.”

Mac sighed, but didn’t reply. She allowed Phryne’s fingers to go on working their magic, gentler now, more tender.

“I’m just worried about you. That’s all. Flirt with her, sleep with her, whatever you like, just try not to get hurt. Okay?” She felt a sudden jab of harder pressure into her temple. “Promise?”

“Ow! Yes.” She squinted up at Phryne’s face, backlit by the bright sunshine streaming in the window, and a different kind of warmth enveloped her. It was the warmth of a family who cared, and it just got stronger when Mr Butler appeared in the doorway, bringing with him the buttery smell of a freshly roasted chicken. Her stomach growled in response, and she squeezed Phryne’s hand as they got up, both lured by the prospect of food. “I promise I will try.”

 

*

 

She was woken by a loud noise, a banging from somewhere that penetrated straight through her light sleep and forced her upright, blinking, in the chair. In the bed next to her, Martha stirred, but didn’t immediately wake.

“Miss Fisher?”

A voice called loudly, a woman’s voice, and Mac realised that someone was knocking hard on the front door. She ran a hand over her eyes. She had come up to check on Martha after lunch and had fallen asleep herself. They hadn’t really talked. Martha had been too tired; her excursion downstairs earlier that morning had been a bit optimistic, and instead she had taken Mac’s hand and asked her to stay. Doing so had been against Mac’s better professional judgement. A quick check over had confirmed that Martha was no worse, and that all she needed was time and rest. There was no nausea, no more dizziness, nothing to indicate that the concussion was a real worry. Even the lump was starting to retreat. But she had found that her personal judgement was a different story, and she hadn’t wanted to leave.

“Miss Fisher!”

Quietly now, trying not to wake her since the racket downstairs didn’t seem to have done, Mac disentangled her fingers from Martha’s and went out onto the landing. The front door was open now, and she could see Mr Butler trying to encourage whoever it was into the parlour to wait for Phryne. But the woman was too upset, and Mac could hear her pleading, almost begging. 

“I’m sorry, Miss Fisher is out at present, but I’m sure she won’t be long…”

“You don’t understand, it’s urgent!”

Mac checked her watch, astonished to see that it was already after three. She had been asleep - with Martha - for over an hour, and Phryne would be down at the station. A brief smile crossed her face. Despite all her concerned words earlier, Phryne hadn’t woken her before she left, and the warmth from Martha’s fingers still lingered. 

“Or can I at least see my sister?”

“Anna?” Mac turned to see Martha, still dishevelled from bed, emerging from the room behind her. “What are you doing here?”

Mac followed Martha downstairs. The sight that greeted her was not pretty. Anna - and now that Mac could see her properly, she recognised her from the night before -looked as if she hadn’t slept. A small bruise was blooming over one cheekbone that she had made no effort to cover, and her blonde hair was pulled back into a scruffy coil at the nape of her neck. But instead of going straight to her, Martha hung back. She looked, Mac thought, more wary than truly concerned.

“Martha, it’s Ben.” Anna sounded as if she would start crying.

“What about him?”

“He didn’t come home last night, and I don’t know where he is.”

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

“One more time.”

“I already told her.” Anna gestured towards Phryne, who couldn’t help her mouth curving into a slight smirk even as she shrugged innocently at Jack. It wasn’t her fault. She had left the station straight away in response to Mac’s telephone call, leaving Jack to try and salvage something of the interview with Eddie. When he had finally caught her up, Anna had already calmed down enough to talk, and also to question why they needed the police involved as well as a Lady Detective. It hadn’t gone down well with Jack at all.

“Humour me, Miss Cooper. When did you last see your brother?”

Anna sighed. “Last night.”

“Was that before or after the fight?”

“Before. He came round to see me when I was warming up. Said he had some business to see to and wouldn’t be there at the fight, but that he’d pick us both up afterwards.”

“What kind of business?”

“I don’t know.” Anna shrugged. “He’s a supervisor at the docks, he often has to go in after hours. He seemed in a hurry so I didn’t hold him up. He asked me to let Martha know.”

“Thanks for not bothering,” Martha muttered, and Anna scowled.

“I didn’t think you’d care all that much whether he was there or not.”

Phryne’s eyes narrowed; she caught Jack’s glance and knew they were thinking the same thing. Martha had been so quick to defend her brother last night, and yet now she didn’t seem concerned that he was missing. Instead, Phryne thought, she seemed on edge. Not worried about her brother but scared, and wary and brittle around her own sister. Once or twice already, she had made a small movement towards Mac’s hand, and then withdrawn again. As if, Phryne thought, she wanted the comfort but didn’t want Anna to see.

Jack leaned across the kitchen table, his hands clasped together. It was the stance she had so often seen him take in the interview room, facing a suspect, piecing their words together in his mind, slotting assumptions and accusations and conjecture in with facts to form a complete picture. She could almost see it happening, now, and she found it fascinating to watch.

“Was that before or after you saw Mr Connolly?”

“Before.”

“What time?”

“I’m not sure…the fight started at seven, so I guess maybe six thirty.”

“So you saw your brother around six thirty, and Jamie Connolly just after that. Then you didn’t see either of them during or after the fight.”

“No.” Anna shook her head. “When Ben didn’t turn up afterwards like he said, I just assumed that he’d been held up.

“Oh, come on, Anna.” Martha sneered. “More likely he came back, saw the police, and scarpered.”

“He wouldn’t do that.” Anna snapped. “He would have made sure we were alright.”

Martha didn’t reply, but Phryne saw her disgusted scowl and the small shake of her head, and for a moment she tuned out the words and just watched them. Both of them. Now that they were together, she could see the family resemblance. They had the same petite build, the same jawline, the same way of gesturing with their hands when they talked. It was Anna, she thought, who dyed her hair, the dark roots just visible with it all scraped back. They didn’t look far apart in age, either. When she looked closely she realised that they could have been twins - a fact which just made things seem even worse. But Anna’s green eyes held none of Martha’s spark. She didn’t, Phryne thought, exude Martha’s alluring combination of vulnerability and strength. Despite the fashionable rose-pink blouse and skirt, despite the polished Mary-Janes and decent coat, Anna looked beaten down in more ways than one, and Phryne felt it tugging at her. She seemed scared, but was it for her brother, Phryne wondered? Or of him?

“I checked the docks this morning.” Anna looked around the table, as if daring anyone there to contradict her or argue. “It was the first place I went, but no one had seen him.”

The look Phryne exchanged with Jack was a long one, an entire conversation held between their eyes. So Anna was smart. Smart enough to have checked her brother’s usual haunts before panicking and coming in search of help. He was the same suspect from five years ago. And now both he, and the man who had provided his alibi, were missing the day after his sisters had been caught boxing at the same sports club.

_I don’t believe in coincidences, Jack._

_Neither do I, Miss Fisher._

“Where are your parents?” She interjected the question, purely on instinct, and for a moment Anna looked taken aback.

“They’re…”

“Dead,” Martha supplied, her voice harsh now and not sounding at all surprised by the question. “Or, at least, Father is. Mother lost it when he died and ended up in a home. So she might as well be.”

Anna’s glare was enough to raise the dead, but Phryne held it. Things were beginning to piece together in her own mind now and she nodded slowly. “So that’s why you live with your brother?”

“It happened during the war,” Martha shrugged. “Makes sense for us to stay together.”

“Well. If we’re done with that pleasant interlude?” Jack glanced at her, and she nodded, even though she knew he hadn’t really been asking her permission. “You’ve no idea where else your brother might have gone?”

“No.” Anna shook her head.

“What about Jamie Connolly?”

“I don’t know.”

“Martha?” Phryne turned to her, but Martha shook her head.

“I don’t know either. Jamie doesn’t seem to have much of a life outside the club. I don’t know what he does when he’s not there, or even where he lives.”

“And no ideas about where your brother might be?”

“No.”

Quite frankly, Martha looked like she didn’t care, and Phryne glanced over at Jack. He nodded, almost imperceptibly. They were done here. 

“Ok, Miss Cooper…both of you.” He stood up from the wooden chair. “I think that’s all for now. We’ll be in touch as soon as we know anything more.”

Anna stood, but Martha remained seated, leaning back in her chair and looking anywhere other than at her sister. Mac sat by her; remarkably quietly, Phryne thought, and she wondered what had passed between the two of them earlier. If anything. She had watched them, just for a moment, both sleeping peacefully, hands resting so naturally together on the bed. It would have taken a harder woman than her to wake them.

“Do you need a lift home?” Phryne rose too, ready to call the cab, but Anna shook her head.

“No, thank you. I walked here, it’s not far. And to be honest, I could do with the fresh air now. If you’re ok to walk, Martha?”

It was the first sign of concern she had shown for her sister since arriving, and the first hint that, despite Martha still being in pyjamas, she expected her sister to leave with her.

“I can’t walk home in these.”

Martha obviously wasn’t happy about leaving, but Phryne was not watching her. She was watching Mac, and she saw the brief flicker of reluctance and of worry that had nothing to do with Martha’s physical condition. It passed over her friend’s face like a summer cloud, a momentary lapse of professional reserve before Mac gathered herself, and Phryne’s heart went out to her. She knew Mac better than anyone. There were things, she knew, that Mac tried to guard even from her, feelings that were too precious and vulnerable to share openly, but every so often she caught a glimpse. She saw it most often when Mac lost a patient, when the death of yet another human being was too much for the professional exterior to handle. But she had also seen it when Mac fell, and she had learned to tell the difference between the casual grace with which her friend gave herself over to a fling, and the tentative, heartfelt opening that came with something more serious. It was already obvious which one this was more likely to be, however reluctant Mac was.

“You need to come, Martha. Please.” Anna looked as if she was about to cry again, and Phryne interjected.

“I can lend you something to wear, but only if you’re up to it.” Her last words were directed at Mac, who nodded. She looked at Martha, her smile both resigned and reassuring.

“I don’t see any medical reason why not. But no walking. You need to rest. Keep an eye on that lump, and any more signs of concussion - dizziness, sickness and so on -then call a doctor.”

“You?”

Mac smiled gently. “Any doctor will do.”

“No.” Martha shook her head, ignoring the movement of people around the kitchen - Anna heading to the hallway, Jack moving to stretch by the back door. “They won’t.”

It felt like a long moment to Phryne, watching from the doorway, before Mac nodded.

“Ok, love.” The words were soft, so soft that Phryne barely heard. “Then me it is.”

 

*

 

“Well, that was interesting.” Phryne reached across Jack for a drop scone, stopping along the way to brush a tiny smear of jam from his chin. He looked up at her, abashed, and she grinned cheekily as she picked up his knife and scraped what was left on it over her own scone. “Two sisters who blatantly hate each other, one brother who was a murder suspect in the not-so-distant past and is now missing, a coach gone missing too, and a club owner who presumably still didn’t talk?”

“Something like that.” Jack blinked as she replaced his knife on his plate. “Are you going to steal all my food today, Miss Fisher?”

“One biscuit and a tiny bit of raspberry jam.” She took a large bite out of the scone. Lunch seemed like a long time ago, and besides, hunger never really entered the equation when Mr Butler made drop scones. It was every woman - and man - for themselves.  “And it was hardly stealing. It was right under your nose.”

“Priceless jewellery often gets stolen the same way.” He picked up his knife firmly, and Phryne smirked. It looked like he wouldn’t let it go again without a fight. “And you forgot to mention your doctor friend, right in the middle of it.”

“Hardly in the middle, Jack,” she protested. “Skating around the periphery, perhaps, but not knee-deep just yet. Besides, you said yourself it’s up to her.”

He nodded, his mouth too full to answer, and she took the opportunity to reach over him once more for the jam, with her own knife this time. She noted, with some satisfaction, that he didn’t bother passing her the jar. It was a repeat of their little dance that morning; her perched on the table, him sat in a chair, the food just out of her reach unless she manoeuvred for it, and him quietly enjoying it just as much as her.

“Did Eddie say anything else?”

Jack just shook his head, the frustration and annoyance from earlier flashing momentarily across his face. The interview had been a washout. Eddie - a small, weaselly-looking man with a limp moustache and a permanent sheen of sweat on his forehead - had refused to talk even with his lawyer present, stating that he had been advised that he wasn’t under any obligation to talk and so he wasn’t going to. It was only when Phryne had politely asked whether he could actually afford more than an hour of the lawyer’s time, given that he had just lost a business that hadn’t been doing too well in the first place, that he had started to answer their questions. Even then they hadn’t learned anything new. Eddie, it seemed, had been clueless as to where the rest of the betting money went, claiming that it hadn’t been part of his deal so he wasn’t interested. He had claimed to have nothing to do with either Anna or Martha beyond collecting their subs from them every month, despite the fact that, as Jack pointed out, they were effectively the gymnasium’s prize fighters. He had said he had no idea where Jamie Connolly could have got to, and neither did he know any Ben Cooper. And at that point, Phryne had been glad to leave.

“He just repeated what he’d already said.”

“Will you charge him?”

“Yes,” Jack nodded, wiping his fingers on a napkin. “Have to. However clueless he was - and I’m not sure I believe that he was - he’s the club owner.”

“Well, at least that’s one thing out of the way. And at least we know where he is, locked up at Russell Street.”

“Collins is tracking down Connolly’s address.”

“And what about Cooper? Mr, I mean.”

“The docks, I suppose.” Jack ran a hand over his face. “There’s nowhere else to start.”

“Hmmm.” Phryne contemplated the last half of her scone thoughtfully, aware of Jack eyeing both it and her. “Why don’t you take the docks and I’ll go and see if our missing Mr Connolly is hiding out at home? He might be able to tell us something about Ben.”

“Uh-uh.” Jack shook his head, his eyes narrowed as he leaned back in his chair. “You’re only suggesting that because you think you’ll be getting all the fun.”

“Jack! It wouldn’t be fun without you anyway.” She pouted at his eye roll. “But I’ll let you come on one condition.”

“Which is?”

“I drive.”

“I knew I wouldn’t like it.”

“And then if Connolly doesn’t turn up anything, we might have time to go to the docks as well before the day shift clocks off. Just in case.” Her last half drop scone was the sweetener, held out teasingly under his nose, and she smiled when he grudgingly took it from her hand. This was the best part of their partnership. she thought, as she watched him devour it. The unspoken part that was just there.


	7. Chapter 7

It was late by the time Mac finally closed her own front door, leaning against it, letting it hold her up in the darkness of her hallway. She should have been exhausted. She had left Wardlow with Anna and Martha and gone straight to the women’s hospital, despite it being her afternoon off, and had lost herself in patients and paperwork: a vain attempt to keep her mind too busy to wander. Her colleagues had been pleased to see her, but not surprised. That, she thought wryly, said it all.

She went through her normal routine of arriving home, a routine that she savoured all the more because she didn’t get to do it very often. She was hardly ever here. When she wasn’t at the hospital, she was at the morgue; when she wasn’t at the morgue she was teaching; when she wasn’t teaching more often than not she was indulging in whisky or cocktails at Phryne’s or at one of the clubs on her social radar; and on the rare occasion none of those applied she often just slept on the couch in her office at the university. It was easier. It wasn’t that she didn’t like her home - a functional apartment, on the third floor of a solid brick house that used to be a boys’ school (although she preferred to ignore that particular bit of its history). It was just that sometimes it felt too far away from where she needed to be, and too empty when she finally got there. But when she did pay it a visit, she was careful to take her shoes off, to put her fedora on the stand that Phryne had gifted her and not to just throw it on the hall table, to hang her coat up properly, and to leave her leather bag by the door, partly so it was handy when she needed to take it with her, and partly so it didn’t enter her living space. Because on the rare occasions that she did come home, Mac didn’t like to bring work home with her.

She didn’t bother switching on the hall light. She knew her way to the kitchen, and to the fine bottle of Scotch that she had been saving for an occasion just as this - the one-in-a-million occasion that combined her being at home, wide awake and wired, and with a woman on her mind rather than on her arm. The whisky had sat in the cupboard for so long that she was sure she would have to dust the bottle before she could open it. Pulling off her cravat as she went, stuffing it into the pocket of her trousers and undoing the top buttons of her shirt with a sigh of relief, she tried to think if she had any food left to soak up some of the alcohol; somehow she doubted it, unless old Mrs Gray had been in to clean. She smiled as she thought of the housekeeper who preferred to be called simply Iris, saying that Mrs Gray made her feel older than she already was, and who tried her best to look after Mac as well as keep the apartment clean and tidy. The latter, Iris always said, was easy. The former, not so much. But when she came, roughly twice a week, she always brought something with her. A fresh loaf, or a cake warm from the oven. Some apples, perhaps, or oranges that had happened to roll her way from one of the market stalls. She always left them, just in case. And if Mac hadn’t been home to enjoy them by the time she came back, then Iris simply took them home for her chickens. Mac had thought on more than one occasion that Iris’s chickens must be the fattest in Melbourne, and she wondered now what wonders Mr Butler would manage to procure with a couple of cake-fed hens.

But this time, the hens were getting none of it.

“Iris, you’re an angel incarnate,” she murmured as she flicked on the kitchen light. There, on the table, was a loaf of bread and small basket of apples. She knew that when she looked in the refrigerator she would find some cheese to go with it. The Scotch smelled divine as she blew off the mostly-imaginary cobwebs and poured herself a generous measure. She just needed to crank the central heating to life, and then she would be all set.

Her front room, like the rest of the apartment, was just enough. Not made for entertaining like Phryne’s parlour, but fine for what she used it for. The furniture was comfortable but sparse. The art on the walls provided enough colour to brighten the room, but was still bland enough that it never invited comment. There were bookcases, cushions, a couple of rugs, a large mirror above the decorative mantel. She had deliberately chosen muted colours, for all of it, but also light ones that lifted her mood. Nothing too bright or fancy. When she was here alone, she invariably wanted to be soothed. When she wasn’t alone, she wasn’t bothered about the decor anyway.

_When she wasn’t alone._

She sighed as she leant back into her favourite chair, plate in one hand and glass in the other. It hadn’t been planned. These things rarely were. Before last week it had been long enough that she couldn’t remember the details, and it hadn’t bothered her. Martha, though, had sent her into enough of a spin that she had been sorry it had turned out to be a one-night fling. Or so she had thought. Seeing her again yesterday had jolted every nerve in Mac’s body, which was why she hadn’t come home last night at all. She had run from Wardlow to the university, retreating to her office couch, unwilling to face either the memories of that night or the fact that the first woman she was really attracted to in a very long time, the first woman who seemed to return the sentiment, was right in the middle of a police investigation.

“And now a patient,” she reminded herself under her breath. She wasn’t sure which was worse.

Phryne had telephoned her, at the hospital when she was taking a short break. They hadn’t been able to find Jamie Connolly, despite running around after dead-end leads for the rest of the afternoon and most of the evening. The fact that he had disappeared hadn’t surprised her, but she had been a bit taken aback that Phryne had bothered to call and tell her.

“ _Just keeping you updated, darling.”_

_“Well, thank you…but why?”_

_“So that you know what you’re getting yourself into.”_

She placed the plate down on the arm of the chair, and ran a hand over her eyes. Suddenly, she had lost her appetite.

 

*

 

She didn’t know how long she sat there, eyes closed, sipping her whisky and ignoring the sandwich that she had made. Her mind was drifting, following tangents and little diversions of its own free will. It roamed over her afternoon, her patients, her research project, back to her patients. But everything it touched seemed to bring her back to Martha.

She had no idea, either, what time it was when she heard the knock at the door. For a moment, she thought she must have drifted right off and been dreaming. No one visited her at home. No one except Phryne, who always telephoned first. _Just in case_ , she always said - just in case Mac wasn’t home, or was home but didn’t want extra company. But then she heard it again, tentative and quiet. Definitely not a Phryne-style knock.

Puzzled, she placed her glass down on the table and stood up, rescuing her dinner from the arm of the chair as she did so. She would save it until the morning. The wooden floor and tiled hallway felt cold under her padding feet, the hall light harsh against her eyes. She had left the key in the lock out of habit. As she turned it, she heard the soft click of heels, slow footsteps in the hallway outside, and she hesitated. Whoever it was had obviously given up. That meant she could too, but after a second’s pause, curiosity got the better of her. She wanted to know which of her colleagues - because she never gave her address out to patients - had decided to come and discuss case notes with her in what had to be the middle of the night.

“Martha?”

The retreating footsteps stopped, and Martha turned.

“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“You didn’t. Is everything alright?” She stepped out into the hallway, her surprise giving way to concern. “You shouldn’t be out.”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“That’s a terrible excuse.”

“I know.” Martha shrugged, and smiled a little shyly. “I couldn’t think of a better one.”

Mac nodded slowly, and stood for a moment. Martha looked so different from that morning. The red wool coat was fitted and fashionable, reaching to her calves and leaving more than a hint of pale stocking and patent leather shoe. But the smart effect was softened by the tendrils of hair escaping from under her cream hat, the depth of her blue eyes lined subtly with kohl. The lump by her eye looked like it had gone right down. Skilful makeup covered most of the bruise; what she hadn’t managed to cover she had hidden with the angle of the hat. _Devastating._ Mac blinked. She had only ever thought that word applied to Phryne. 

“I’m sorry. I’ll leave you in peace.”

“No,” Mac shook her head, and stepped to one side. “No, come in.”

She made them both tea, in the end. More Scotch didn’t seem to be a good idea, especially when the doctor in her was screaming that here was a woman recovering from concussion. Martha’s presence seemed to fill her kitchen. She had brought the night air in with her, the lingering chill of winter and the delicate fragrance of spring, along with a slightly spicier scent that Mac knew was hers alone. It was intoxicating. Distracting. And not, she discovered as she snatched her finger out of the way of the steam, the best thing to be thinking about while she was trying to handle a whistling kettle.

“How do you take it?”

“Black, please.” Martha had shed her coat, revealing a simple cream skirt and jumper, the colour broken only by a large ornate buckle on the skirt. “With lemon if you have it.”

“Just as well. That’s all I do have.”

Martha laughed, and Mac couldn’t help smiling in return. But she had questions. Questions that she wasn’t going to let bubble and dissolve on the tip of her tongue while she was otherwise engaged.

“Please tell me you didn’t walk here.”

“Not entirely,” Martha admitted, taking the tea Mac handed to her gratefully and following her through to the parlour. “Miss Fisher gave me the number of the cab that she uses, earlier, in case I needed them.” She sank into the armchair across from Mac’s. “I wanted to be out. I walked a little way, and then called the cab from a bar.”

“And somehow you ended up here.”

“I remembered where you live.”

Mac leaned back and sipped her tea, eyeing Martha appraisingly over the rim of her cup and wondering which of the cabbies - Bert or Cec - to take to task in the morning. “You do know that being out on the streets and in a bar while recovering from a concussion was a very bad idea?”

“I feel much better.”

“That’s not what I asked, although I’m glad to hear it.”

“I needed to get out of the house.” Martha pursed her lips. “Anna was driving me mad earlier, crying one minute and angry the next, because of Ben. Then she said she was going out. I don’t know where, I just didn’t want to be there when she got back.”

“You should be resting.”

“I rested enough this afternoon. I couldn’t sleep any more.” 

“So you didn’t take the painkillers I gave you, then.”

“Please don’t go all doctor on me.” Martha sighed and put down her cup. “No. I wasn’t in that much pain and I didn’t want to be drowsy any more.” She sounded annoyed, and Mac tried not to roll her eyes. “I’m sorry. I should go.” But she didn’t stand up. 

“Martha…” Mac put down her own cup and leaned forward, her feet planted firmly on the floor and her elbows on her knees. It was one of her “being tough with a patient” stances, one of several in her armoury, and it was deliberate. Fun as the games could be, she suddenly wasn’t in the mood for them. “If you didn’t want a doctor, then why are you here?”

“I just told you.”

Mac sighed, and let her head drop. She didn’t want the frustration to show, but honestly…

“And I wanted to see you.” Martha’s words were so soft that she almost missed them. “You. Not a doctor.”

Mac lifted her head. Martha’s eyes had grown darker, or maybe it was just the lower light in the room. A soft wave of hair fell over her forehead, and her fragrance once again filled Mac’s senses, all spice and soft jasmine this time with no hint of the outside world. She was all there.

“Is that really a good idea?” Her own voice sounded husky to her ears, and she closed her eyes briefly as Martha reached over, brushed light fingers down her cheek. 

“Seems like a good idea to me.”

“You have a concussion.”

“So you keep saying.” Martha’s eyes were teasing. “But I managed to get here without keeling over.”

“You’re…” Mac paused. She didn’t want to bring the events of the day between them, not right now, but it was there in her mind. She couldn’t help it.

“About to get a police record for fighting?”

“Something like that.”

Martha hesitated, the tips of her fingers returning to Mac’s face. “You don’t seem like the type who would be bothered by that.”

“Not generally, no, but…”

“But what?”

Mac caught hold of those fingers, letting her own run slowly across each one. She wanted so badly to let her lips follow. Slipping off the chair, crouching down beside Martha, she allowed herself to sink into the blue eyes that were gazing down at her. Just a tiny bit.

“What do you want, Martha?” she murmured. She saw Martha’s brow furrow a little, and reached up a hand to smooth it over, taking care to avoid her eye. “We only met once before yesterday. You come here, late at night, flirting with me one minute and annoyed the next. You can’t seem to make up your mind whether to stay or go.” She let her finger trail down Martha’s cheekbone, all the way to her lips, and was rewarded with a soft, sharp breath. “You act like the tough boxer, but more often than not I see something else.” Her finger dropped to Martha’s neck, down to the pale collarbone that was peeking out from under the cowl neck of the jumper. “Which one is it?”

“I wasn’t annoyed with you.” Martha’s voice was a whisper, her eyes flickering with Mac’s touch. “Call it the side-effects of concussion?”

Mac chuckled quietly. “We could do.”

“And I’m sorry I didn’t call. I wanted to. I wanted to see you again, but like I said…” She gestured to her eye, and Mac shrugged, brushing it off. “I don’t want to go.”

“Then stay.” Mac’s fingers hovered. “But I can’t help being concerned, Martha, I’m a doctor.”

“Forget that. Just for tonight.”

It sounded so easy.

Martha’s lips were soft on hers. So warm, and so soft. New and strange again, to start with, but with a creeping hint of familiarity and she found that she loved this; the rediscovery, the sensual challenge of remembering. She let her tongue tease, let her hands wander lightly. They would find their own way. She was deliberately gentle, taking it slowly, allowing the waves of sensation to flow over her with the slow throb of arousal that was beginning to hum through her body. A small moan escaped the back of Martha’s throat that she caught with her lips. She could sense the desire. She was aware of Martha’s fingers running down her body, catching every bit of exposed skin they could find and needing more, and yet she sensed a hint of shyness too, one that hadn’t been there before.

And so she tried not to rush. She kissed until kissing was no longer enough, for either of them, but she let Martha be the one to whisper for the bedroom. She waited for Martha to begin undoing the last remaining buttons on her shirt before she let her own hands deal carefully with the jumper, and with the buckle on the skirt. She asked with her eyes, and with barely-there whispers, before taking with her hands, her lips, her tongue; Martha encouraged her, seemed to sink into her, returning her passion with a fervour that she hadn’t felt in a long time. There were no words. Only a few intimate, formless murmurs and breaths of laughter as they found spaces to work around Martha’s injuries. Touches, and endless kisses that merged into one. Soft breathing that became ragged, desperate. One deep, blinding release, and then another. 

Apparently it was that easy to forget. 

 

*

 

It was dawn when she woke, golden light streaming in through the windows. She hadn’t closed the curtains. Her sleep had been light, tentative; even though her body was so pleasantly sated, she hadn’t been able to entirely switch off. She had been so conscious of Martha there, beside her. The quiet, romantic part of her - the part that she tried to deny existed - said that she hadn’t wanted to miss any of it, had wanted to be aware of every breath, every movement, every whisper. The other part said that it had been so long since she had shared the bed for a full night that she was nervous of relaxing.

Martha, she knew, had slept deeply. Her bruised body had eventually sought out Mac’s, not for more pleasure but for comfort, and when Mac had drifted off it had been with Martha’s head on her chest and one arm draped across her stomach. Now, though, when she finally opened her eyes, she could see that Martha was awake. Still in bed, but propped up on one elbow and gazing down, renewed desire and uncertainty and traces of sleep mingling in those eyes.

“Good morning,” Mac murmured softly.

“Good morning.” Martha smiled, a little shyly. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“You didn’t.”

“Good.” There was a long pause. She looked beautiful, Mac thought. Delicate and tender in the early morning light. She wondered when the makeup had been washed off. Without it, the bruise still looked ugly, but it was almost the flaw that sealed the perfection. Lifting one finger, she traced the outline of it slowly, gently. Martha didn’t even flinch.

“I wasn’t sure if I should still be here or not.”

Mac blinked and pushed herself up a little, running her fingers through her unruly hair. It was a blunt comment that she hadn’t expected, but at least it woke her up properly.

“Yes,” she said firmly, and reached out a hand again. This time Martha tilted her cheek into it, turned her head and kissed the palm. “You should. If only so that I can check you over properly.”

“I thought you did a pretty thorough job of that last night.” Martha smirked, and Mac rolled her eyes. She had walked into that one, she thought. Too early in the morning.

“You know what I mean.”

“Umm-hmmm.” Martha sank down and captured Mac’s protests with her lips. It was a soft kiss, almost chaste, but full of promise and now with so much more confidence than their first kiss the night before. “You’re back to being the doctor.” Mac moaned as Martha’s tongue lightly teased her lips before pulling away. “And since I was so un-cooperative last night, perhaps I should make it easier for you this morning?”

A slow smile curved Mac’s lips as Martha sat upright, deliberately allowing the quilt that covered her to fall. “Very considerate.” She reached out a hand again, this time to cup one breast, small and firm, her thumb darting over the nipple, and Martha gasped. “But - purely from a medical perspective - I think we should start with this.”

 

*

 

The sun was higher in the sky when Mac came to again. It caught the top of Martha’s head as they lay sprawled together, a tangle of limbs and too deliciously heavy to move, and turned the dark hair into inky treacle, soft and luxurious against bare skin. Everything felt unreal. Her head seemed as if it was high above her body, the aching in her hips far away and yet delightfully sharp at the same time. The body pressed up against hers felt like a dream, but the lingering heat and dampness in between her legs told her otherwise. She felt completely and beautifully done in.

“Does everyone call you Mac?”

“Huh?” Her eyes flickered open at the question, a shiver running over her as Martha’s finger lazily traced over her breasts.

“Mac.” Martha repeated. “Is that what everyone calls you?”

Mac wriggled a little. The finger had no real intent behind it, but even so, it had repercussions. “Yes. Almost everyone. Apart from my mother on the rare occasions I speak to her.”

“You don’t mind if I don’t?”

Mac shrugged. “No. But why not?”

“Why not?” Martha laughed. “Because it’s too…I don’t know. Impersonal. I can’t call you by your surname when I’m naked in bed with you.”

Mac refrained from saying that everyone else had. Instead, she closed her eyes. That finger was getting a little too close to a certain sweet spot for comfort.

“If you don’t like Elizabeth, I could always make something up.”

“You should know,” Mac caught the finger, and opened one eye, “that none of my relationships have ever reached the pet name stage.”

“Then Betty it is.”

“Don’t you dare.” Mac shot out a hand to tickle, remembering just in time to avoid Martha’s right side, and Martha squealed.

“Okay.” Martha held up one hand in surrender, laughing, her eyes dancing. “You know you should be careful. I have concussion.”

“Not any more, and it’s the other side that’s bruised.”

“It still hurts.”

“Hmmm.” Mac dropped her lips to the ribs where her fingers had been. “Is that better?”

“Much,” Martha sighed in pleasure.

“We’ll stick to Elizabeth. Anything else you want to ask while you’re about it?”

“Yes, actually.” Martha settled herself against Mac, her voice teasing. “How did you and Miss Fisher meet?”

“Phryne?” She hadn’t expected that question, but fair enough, and she let her head fall back on the pillow as she told the brief - and sanitised - version of the story. “We knew each other at school, for a bit, but it wasn’t until the war that we met up with each other again, right towards the end. She was a nurse. I was only partially qualified but they were so desperate for doctors that no one really cared. I’d been in Paris for a while and her unit had just been transferred. She brought me an ambulance full of blood and guts, and then asked me if I wanted to go out for a drink once I’d patched them all up.”

“And you did?”

“I did.” She smiled at the memory. “Only a drink is never just a drink with Phryne. At least, it wasn’t then. We ended up going round all the cabarets in Pigalle that were still open, then climbing up to Montmartre with our last bottle of wine for sunrise before going straight back on duty. She still holds the honour of giving me my worst ever hangover.”

“Then what did you do?” Martha’s voice was quieter now, more reflective. “After the war?”

“Left Phryne in Paris, came back here and finished my degree.”

“That can’t have been easy.”

Mac looked at her, those ocean-blue eyes holding more understanding than she had ever seen, and she shook her head. “I was the only woman. So no, it wasn’t.”

“And yet here you are.” Martha smiled. “Doctor, lecturer, pathologist, and best friend in town.”

“Here I am. My turn.”

Martha shrugged. “What do you want to know?”

“Whatever you want to tell me.” She ran her fingers gently down Martha’s cheek, and waited. 

“I….”

Whatever she had been going to say, though, was lost in the sudden jarring ring of the telephone, and Mac swore under her breath. Martha chuckled. The moment broken, she began disentangling herself from Mac’s unwilling arms.

“You should get that.”

Mac grumbled all the way down the hallway. She toyed with the idea of not picking up at all, but professionalism got the better of her. If it was the hospital, it would be an emergency. If it was the university, they could go hang. If it was Phryne, she would tell her friend exactly what she thought of her terrible timing, and catch up with her later. But she supposed that she should at least find out. 

It turned out to be none of those. By the time she had finished the short call and hung up, her stomach felt heavy; it felt even worse when she felt two warm arms slip around her waist.

“Something you need to deal with?”

But Mac didn’t answer. She wasn’t sure how to, and she felt those arms gently turning her around.

“Elizabeth?” Martha’s gaze was concerned. “What is it?”

She couldn’t put it delicately. She didn’t know how to put it at all, but Martha was one step ahead, concern changing to wary fear and a cloud coming down over her eyes.

“It’s Ben, isn’t it?”

“They don’t know, love.” Mac took her hands. It was all she could do. “It was Inspector Robinson. They found a body, but they don’t know who.”


	8. Chapter 8

It was always the part of the job that he hated.

There was never anything particularly pleasant about the morgue, but he had learned, over the years, to treat it much as he did the interview room at the station, or his office, or the cells. It was just another room that held evidence. He had learned to not think so much about the fact that the morgue’s evidence was always a dead body rather than a live one. But it was always the same; whenever he had to bring a relative in, or a friend, to identify one of those bodies, it suddenly ceased to become just evidence. The morgue ceased to become just another room. He never failed to see the place through the eyes of those that were grieving, and it gave him the shivers every time.

He had often wondered how Dr Macmillan coped. He had always thought of it as something that was simply dealt with; a necessary part of the job, a suppression of the emotions that was as vital to learn as the right way to hold a scalpel. Only rarely had he seen her façade slip from professional flippancy into disgust, frustration, anger. He had never asked if it was ever the same for her as it was for him, if she ever felt that switch from professional to personal as the body on the table became a human being. Today, though, he didn’t need to ask.

“Miss Cooper?” He heard his own voice; gentle, professional. “You understand why you’re here?”

Martha nodded. Her red wool coat was a stark contrast to the clinical white of the morgue, the sheet that covered the body on the table, to Mac’s white lab coat. A violent splash of colour in a place that had been drained of it. Her face was set, determined even though he could see her hands shaking. Briefly, she reached for Mac’s hand and gripped it, squeezed as if taking strength, and then let go.

“Dr Macmillan?” His eyes told her how sorry he was that she had to do this, and she gave a brief nod. “When you’re ready, Miss Cooper. I just need you to tell me whether you recognise this man and if so, who he is.”

“Go ahead.” Martha nodded to Mac.

Mac carefully pulled down the sheet, exposing the man’s head and face but no more. It was lucky, Jack thought - if such things could be classed as lucky - that there were no visible injuries apart from the very obvious knife wound in the chest. Death turned even the most handsome face into something macabre all on its own. When pre-mortem injuries were added to the mix, it was often something truly horrifying.

Mac’s eyes, he saw, never left Martha’s face.

“It’s not Ben,” Martha whispered.

“Are you sure?” It sounded like a stupid question, even to him, but distraught relatives had been known to make mistakes. Wishful thinking, sometimes, or sometimes there were more sinister motives. He always checked, and he always watched. Just in case.  

Martha took a couple of deep, ragged breaths. She was relieved, he thought, until he saw her eyes, wide with surprise and shock, and fear.

“Martha?” Mac reached out a hand, her pale face etched with concern. Martha took it without looking, the gesture on both sides already instinctive, and he found himself thinking of Phryne. He hadn’t been able to contact her that morning.

“It’s Jamie.”

“Jamie Connolly?” His attention snapped back, and he looked at the man on the table. There was nothing distinguishing about him. Late forties, brown hair cropped short, a nose that had seen better days; perhaps, he thought now, broken in the ring. “Are you sure?”

“Positive.” Martha nodded. He could see her starting to get control of herself, heard her breathing slow down with the soothing touch of Mac’s hand, and he reached over and pulled the sheet back himself. She didn’t need to look at it anymore.

“Thank you, Miss Cooper.”

“What happened?” 

“We’ll know more after the autopsy.” It was the standard response, brought out every time, because invariably they asked the same question. The hollowness of it always made him cringe inwardly, but there was nothing else he could say. “I’ll get someone to run you home.”

“Would you give us a minute, Inspector?”

“Of course.” He nodded to Mac, and stepped out just a few paces. Enough to give them some privacy, and enough that he could feel the sun on his face. He inhaled deeply, lungfuls of air that was so fresh and clean after the clinical heaviness of the morgue that it almost hurt, and tried not to listen to the murmured voices behind him.

“ _Will you be doing it?”_

_“Yes, love. I’m sorry.”_

_“No, don’t be.” A sigh. “I’m glad it’s you.”_

When he turned around, they were holding each other.

“Jack?”

He had been so lost in thought that he hadn’t heard the quick clip of heels, hadn’t even caught the waft of perfume that always preceded Phryne’s arrival anywhere - or was that his imagination now? He wasn’t sure he could tell. She hurried up to him, her fur coat streaming behind her and her face slightly flushed.

“Miss Fisher.” He nodded to her, subtly blocking her way to the morgue until he was sure that she had seen what she would be interrupting. “I did try and call you.”

“I know.” She let her gaze rest on Mac and Martha for a moment, and he struggled to read her expression. Tenderness. Concern. Resignation. The she turned her attention back to him, and it was gone. “Dot told me. So who is it?”

“Jamie Connolly.”

Phryne exhaled, long and slow. “Well, that would explain why we couldn’t find him. Where was the body?”

“Down an alley near the sports club, behind a bar and tucked inside a rubbish bin.” Phryne grimaced. “Martha identified him. I will admit, my first thought was her brother.”

She nodded. “Any ideas?”

“Of cause of death? Well, the stab wounds in his chest are a giveaway, but apart from that…” He titled his head towards the morgue door. “We’ll have to wait and see. The brother’s still missing.”

“Interesting,” she murmured, and a little alarm bell went off in his brain. When Phryne thought something was interesting, it usually meant trouble.

“What kind of interesting?”

“Well, while you were dealing with a dead body, I was down at the docks.”

He rolled his eyes, a sigh of frustration escaping him. He should have known. “Can you not keep your hands where I can see them, Miss Fisher, just for one case?” Her eyes looked innocently up at him, but he saw the corners of her mouth starting to curve in a delighted, flirtatious smile, and he shook his head quickly. Bad choice of words. He had meant to ask why she had to go off and do her own thing on his case without telling him, but… “Never mind. What did you find?”

“Well, I spoke to a couple of the men who were unfortunate enough to have our Mr Cooper as a supervisor.” Her voice was conspiratorial as she leaned closer to him, ostensibly so that Martha didn’t hear. “None of them had a good word to say about him.”

“That doesn’t make him a murderer. Necessarily.”

“No, it doesn’t. But - and here’s the interesting part - it seems that, five years ago when Robert Gordon was found murdered, Ben Cooper owed quite a substantial amount of money.”

“Owed money to who?”

“That’s even more interesting.” Phryne inclined her head towards the morgue. “Our dead Mr Connolly.”

“Really?” Jack glanced back, but Mac and Martha were heading out of the door towards him and he didn’t want to continue this in front of them. It would wait. But in the meantime, he wondered if there wasn’t something else. Martha’s face had been awful when she had realised who it was, and whilst he knew it could just have been shock, he wasn’t convinced.

He wasn’t, he realised, convinced about much in this case at all.

“Miss Fisher, would you be able to run Miss Cooper home, please?” He raised one eyebrow, knowing that she would catch his meaning. He had got used to this so quickly, he thought. Having a partner who could all but read his mind. He didn’t honestly know now what he would do without it. 

“Of course.” Phryne nodded and took Martha’s arm, leaving no room for argument. He watched them out of sight, knowing that she would do her best - or worst - before reluctantly turning back to the morgue.

“Hovering won’t make it go any faster, Inspector.”

“I’m not staying to watch.” His stomach was good for most things, but he hadn’t seen a full autopsy since his training days and he didn’t particularly want to put it to the test. “I just wanted to make sure that you’re okay to do this.”

“Of course.” Mac paused in her preparations and looked him in the eye, her expression pained but determined. “Any reason why I wouldn’t be?”

“No.” He knew that she had understood, and that her clipped words the only way she knew to reassure him. He brought it swiftly back to business. “That hip flask that was found with the body.”

“This one?” She held it up; small, solid silver, an ornate patterns swirled into the metal. “Not the kind of thing I’d expect to see on a boxing coach, but still.”

“No,” Jack shook his head. The flask didn’t look old, either. Had Connolly been getting extra money from somewhere else, he wondered? It looked too new to have been bought with the repaid debt from Ben Cooper - assuming, of course, that the rumour of debt was true, and that it had been repaid. “Can you test the contents?”

“Already on it.”

“Thank you. Let me know as soon as you do.”

“As always, Inspector.” He turned away just as she picked up the scalpel. “As always.”

 

*

 

Phryne was driving slowly, far more slowly than she had done to reach the morgue that morning. She wanted the time with Martha; time to talk to her before they arrived at her home, time without the possibility of her sister’s presence. She had contemplated taking her to Wardlow on the way and sitting her down for some proper questioning, but a look at the woman’s pale face had put her off that idea.

“Are you alright, Martha?”

Martha nodded, her gaze fixed firmly ahead.

“Will Anna be home?”

“I’m not sure.” Martha’s voice was quiet, and Phryne strained to hear over the hum of the engine. “She was out when I left last night. I don’t know where she went.”

So Martha hadn’t been home all night. She wasn’t surprised, really, and she didn’t need to ask where. But this obviously wasn’t going to be easy. As she turned a corner, she spied a parking spot along the side of the road and pulled sharply in. A snap decision, and a compromise between the informality of a chat while driving and a proper interrogation in her kitchen. Martha looked at her, surprised, and Phryne switched off the engine and twisted in her seat so that she was facing her.

“What do you know that you aren’t saying, Martha?”

“I…” Martha hesitated, her eyes confused. “I don’t know what you mean, Miss Fisher. If it’s about Elizabeth, then…”

“I told you to call me Phryne.” She smiled, tempering the effect of her previous words. “And no, it’s not about Mac. Unless you want it to be.”

Martha shrugged, and Phryne smiled inwardly. She knew exactly what Martha wanted to ask about Mac. Normally, she might have been tempted to tease a little, but now she didn’t have the heart.

“You’re wondering if I’m jealous?” Martha flushed, and Phryne shook her head. “Martha, Mac and I aren’t like that. We’re just friends.” She didn’t think the few nights they had spent together as lovers, in the ramshackle boarding house next to the Grand Palais in Paris (which, she distinctly remembered, had not been so grand once it was converted to a military hospital) really counted or were worth mentioning. It had amused them both over the years. They were so good as friends; sometimes it seemed inconceivable that they had ever tried anything else. Neither did she want to point out that their friendship had survived plenty of flings and relationships between them in the past. No doubt it would survive plenty more. “I wouldn’t say I’m not worried, but generally she can look after herself.”

“Thank you.” Martha looked at her, her blue eyes full of emotion that Phryne couldn’t quite discern. “But then what did you want to know?”

“You know what. Martha, your coach has just been found murdered.” Phryne decided that being blunt was the only way. “You brother is missing. If there’s anything you haven’t told us - anything at all - then now would be a good time to mention it.”

Martha sighed and looked down at her lap, her fingers clasped together. Phryne watched as she fiddled her thumbs, passing one over the other, catching a thread on her glove each time, and waited for her to speak. But there was nothing.

“Fine.” Phryne nodded. She had expected as much. “But you must be able to tell me something about Jamie.”

“What do you want to know?”

“What was he like?”

“As a coach? The best there was. He knew every person’s strengths, and weaknesses. He would bring out the best of what you had, push you hard if you wanted it and could take it, teach you every trick in the book. He’d fought a lot himself before he retired with injury. He knew what he was doing.” Martha’s eyes flickered with sudden anger as she looked over at Phryne. “But as a person? He was a bastard.”

Funny, Phryne thought, that the dock workers had used almost exactly the same language about her brother.

“In what way?”

Martha raised one eyebrow. “How do you think?” Her laugh was mirthless. “He trained women to fight each other. He enjoyed it. And I don’t mean that he got a sense of satisfaction at enabling us to defend ourselves, or helping us to keep fit, or that he was all out for women’s equality.” She sighed again, and her eyes dropped. “It’s just the way it is. The way he was.”

“How far did it go, Martha?” Her voice was gentle now, belying the anger she felt beginning to seethe in her stomach. She wasn’t really surprised. But the fact that she had half-expected it didn’t help.

“With me? He didn’t really bother. I obviously wasn’t his type. With the other women…I don’t really know, you’d have to ask them. They complained about him. I saw him trying it on. I don’t know what actually happened.”

“And with Anna?”

Martha shrugged. “Like I said. You’d have to ask her.”

Phryne raised her eyebrows. “You don’t know if he assaulted your own sister?”

“We aren’t exactly close, Miss…sorry, Phryne.”

“I’d noticed.” She paused. “Martha, why did your brother owe Jamie money?”

Martha’s breath halted for a mere second before she shook her head. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Her eyes, though, told a different story. It was plain that she did know, but Phryne let it go. For now. 

“What happened to him?” Martha’s voice trembled, and Phryne watched her. What, she wondered, was behind the fear that was palpable in the confined space of the car? What was behind the sudden burst of anger towards her coach?

Had Martha been angry enough, or scared enough, to commit murder?

“I’m not sure.” Instinct told her not to reveal the details. Martha looked shaken and upset enough for now, and besides, the knife wounds might not have been fatal. She had learned that much in her time working with Jack. “We’ll find out soon enough.” Twisting back in her seat, she restarted the engine. Martha was looking more and more pale, and distinctly sick.

“Let’s get you home.”


	9. Chapter 9

“So he took advantage of the women he was training.” Jack leaned back in his desk chair, a disgusted look on his face. “I suppose we should expand our pool of suspects, then.”

“You think one of the women did it?” 

“It’s a possibility.” Jack looked up, watching her as she leaned against the filing cabinet. She had a remarkably cat-like way of leaning, he thought. Relaxed. Sensual. “Wouldn’t you?”

“What, would I have wanted to kill him? Probably,” she admitted. “But what about Ben?”

“I don’t know.” He spread his hands as if hoping to catch the answer in the air. “Maybe he just took off for a few days.”

The look she gave him told him that she didn’t believe that for a second, and he shrugged. Neither did he, really.

“I had a poke around the house when I dropped Martha off.” Phryne pushed herself off the filing cabinet and dropped down into the chair on the other side of his desk, her expression thoughtful. 

“You mean you snooped?”

“Ladies never snoop, Jack. I discreetly searched on my way to use the bathroom.” She raised one eyebrow as if daring him to comment, but he just smiled. He would let her have that one. “It didn’t look like Ben had taken anything with him. At least nothing obvious. There was still a suitcase under his bed, and all his things still in the bathroom - including a bottle of barbiturates that had his name on the prescription label.”

“Did you get…”

“The name of the doctor?” She smirked, and reached into her coat to pull out a piece of paper from an inside pocket. “What do you take me for?”

He didn’t bother to answer, but leaned forward and took the paper from her hands.

“Dr Hoyland.”

“Never heard of him - or her - but Mac should know. I’ll ask her later.” Her face clouded. “I suppose Martha’s a suspect.”

He nodded. “Just like everyone else.”

“She was scared, Jack.”

“I know.”

“Angry, and scared.” She began drumming her fingers on the desk, a soft, staccato one-two-three that should have been irritating but was strangely soothing. It slowed his mind, brought his attention away from the questions and thoughts that were jostling for place in his head, gave him another point of focus. “But he’s dead. He’s not going to hurt her anymore. So what was she scared of?”

“Being labelled as a murder suspect?”

“No,” Phryne shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. She’s not as tough as she makes out, but she wasn’t scared of that. She didn’t even seem to think about it. And why would she have told me all of that if she did it? She would know it gives her a motive, she’s not stupid.”

“She would have known we would talk to the other women. It would come out sooner or later.”

“Perhaps.”

“You don’t think she did it?”

“No.” The more she thought about it, the more she was convinced. “No, I don’t.”

“You can’t let…”

“I’m not the one with personal feelings, Jack, so they’re not getting in the way.” She fixed him with a stare, her fingers hovering in mid air before resuming their tapping. “No, she hated Connolly. But she was scared of something else.”

“The brother, then?” He leaned forward, still watching her. Watching her thoughts as they flitted across her mind. “Scared for him, or of him?”

“Both, I would say.” 

“And Anna?”

“The same. Didn’t you see her yesterday?”

He nodded. He had, and he had thought it too. “We’ll need to bring her in anyway for questioning. Martha too.” He paused, and cleared his throat. He wasn’t sure how best to put what he wanted to ask. “Do you think…I mean…Dr Macmillan…”

She smirked, and he felt his cheeks growing unaccountably warm. “You mean she spent the night with Martha again, and do I think there was pillow talk?”

“Something like that.”

“Inspector Robinson, you’re blushing.”

“I’m a grown man, Miss Fisher. I’m hardly likely to blush at the thought of that.” He could hardly admit that it was her gaze making him heat up. Her sparkling eyes, and teasing smile. Anyway, he suspected that she already knew, and once again he was feeling like he had somehow ended up on the back foot but couldn’t quite work out where or how it had happened.

“I suspect that there wasn’t much talking going on at all, Jack.” She leaned forward. “Mac and I are remarkably similar in that respect.”

He swallowed, hard, and saw the playful satisfaction in her eyes.

“But I will ask. Save you the embarrassment.”

“Thank you.” His throat was dry. 

“You’re welcome.” She stood up, a sudden flurry of activity, and he exhaled deeply. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a date that I really don’t want to miss.”

“Oh?”

“With a hot bath, a cognac, and D H Lawrence, Inspector. A lady needs some relaxation before spending the evening with her lovestruck friend and a corpse.”

And with that, she was gone, whirling out as she always whirled in, leaving him with more questions than answers and the barest hint of a smile on his face.

 

*

 

She found her best friend at the university, elbow-deep in papers that seemed, to Phryne’s eyes at least, to have no order to them whatsoever. Mac had obviously come straight from the morgue and attempted to settle to some research. Her shirt sleeves were rolled up, and when Phryne peeked under the desk she could see that the smart brown brogues had also come off, revealing a dare-devil pair of red socks.

_“Don’t mind me”._ She had breezed in, treating Mac’s office in much the same way as she treated Jack’s - like an extension of her home. _“I’ll just make myself comfortable.”_ And she had, settling on the couch that she knew doubled as Mac’s bed more often than not, and pouring herself a generous measure of the whisky from the top drawer of the desk. She had settled for tea after her bath that afternoon instead of the cognac that she had teased Jack with, and now she was more than ready for a drink. But in the twenty minutes that she had been sitting there, Mac had been staring at the same sheet of paper. The whisky that Phryne had poured for her sat untouched by her elbow. The breeze fluttered gently in through the open crack of the window, lifting the corners of some of the papers, but she barely seemed to notice, and in the end Phryne reached over her shoulders and took the paper from her hands. It was blank, save for two lines.

“Not much research getting done, then.”

Mac sighed and pushed her chair away from the desk, letting her head hang loose over the back of it.

“No.” She looked at Phryne from almost upside down. “Too tired.”

“You have been at the morgue for most of the day. That’s enough to wipe anyone out.”

“True, but if you’ve come scavenging I don’t have anything for you yet.” Mac slowly lifted her head again and rubbed her eyes. “Nothing official, anyway.”

“And unofficially?”

Mac reached over for a folder that was teetering on top of one of the piles on the desk, and flipped it open. Phryne recognised it as the type that was opened on every body that was processed through the morgue; just another routine element that gradually turned a human being into a case, a file, a number. She knew it had to be done. She also knew that Mac, unlike some of the other pathologists, never forgot what, or who, she was dealing with.

“It was the knife that killed him. The wounds were consistent with a smooth blade, not too long. A bit like yours, I would imagine.”

“Hmm.” Phryne pondered for a moment, before shifting her weight onto her hip and lifting up her skirt on one side. The knife was, as usual, tucked into the lace of her garter, but Mac just shook her head as she extracted it and handed it over. “Like this?”

“When are you going to find somewhere else to keep that thing?”

“It’s handy.” She shrugged as Mac took the knife, holding it up to the light, gently drawing the tip of one finger across the blade.

“Yep.” She handed the knife back to Phryne. “Same sort of thing. The wounds didn’t go very deep, but they were well aimed. Straight through the rib cage.”

“Ugh.” Phryne turned up her nose as she tucked the knife back where it came from and rearranged her skirt. “So someone who knew what they were doing.”

“None of this is official, you understand?”

“Of course!” Phryne raised one eyebrow innocently. “I won’t breathe a word until the official report is released.”

“Apart from to Jack first thing tomorrow morning.”

She acknowledged it with a smile, a tilt of her head, and they sat in companionable silence for a few moments. It was dusk outside. The short days of winter were already beginning to succumb to the lighter evenings of spring, a few more precious moments of daylight each day, the same every year. Tonight, it reminded her of France, where September had not been the harbinger of spring but of autumn, and of shorter, cooler, and darker days in more ways than one. If it hadn’t been for Mac, she wasn’t sure she would have survived those last months of the war.

“You know Martha asked if I was jealous.” She regarded her friend with a smile, her eyes teasing over the rim of her glass.

“Oh?”

“Umm-hmm. I told her all about Paris, and then…” She broke off, laughing, as Mac lobbed a balled-up piece of paper with remarkable accuracy at her head.

“No, you didn’t.” Mac was laughing herself, and Phryne shook her head.

“No, I didn’t. Would it have made any difference if I had?”

“No. Because while I can just about resist your considerable charm” -Phryne smirked as her words from the day before were quoted back at her - “it’s quite obvious that men seem to find it more difficult. Even Jack, these days.”

“It’s taken him long enough.” Underneath the grumbled reply, Phryne felt a warm smile blossom in her stomach. “But I’m not here to talk about me.”

“Oh?”

“You know she’s a suspect, Mac. She has to be.”

“I know.” Mac nodded, her gaze focused on a point beyond the window, beyond Phryne’s reach.

“Did she say anything to you? Anything at all?”

“About the case, you mean?”

Phryne rolled her eyes. “Yes, I mean about the case. I love you, but love has its limits. I don’t want to hear anything else.”

“No, she didn’t.” Mac sighed. Her eyes were unreadable, far away somewhere else, and Phryne knew better than to try and follow. She trusted that Mac would tell her whatever she needed to know. For now, though, her friend needed a distraction, and there was nothing Phryne did better. 

“You know what you need?” She put her drink down and stood, holding out her hands to Mac who eyed her warily. “You need a good dance.”

“No.”

Phryne took the glass out of Mac’s hand and took her hands anyway, pulling her upright.

“Phryne, I am not going to the Green Mill.”

“Who said anything about the Green Mill?” She took hold of Mac’s waist with one hand, drawing her closer, and began to shimmy on the spot, humming, her hips swaying in time to the blues tune that had been playing in all the rebellious clubs the previous year.

_Went out last night, had a great big fight…_

Mac threw back her head and laughed. “Only you could think that’s appropriate.” But her body picked up the rhythm, and Phryne felt a hand come to rest on her hip as they began to properly dance, twirling and dipping and spinning their way around the tiny floor space. Mac was a good dancer, despite her objections; Phryne knew that well. 

_They say I do it, ain't nobody caught me_

_Sure got to prove it on me;_

_Went out last night with a crowd of my friends_

_They must've been women, 'cause I don't like no men…._

They belted out the lyrics together, moving faster and faster to the same song over and over again, before a particularly extravagant twirl sent them sprawling, laughing and out of breath, onto the sofa. Her hand still in Mac’s, Phryne continued to sing.

_It's true I wear a collar and a tie_

_Makes the wind blow all the while.._

“Stop it,” Mac laughed, slapping her lightly on the leg.

“It’s your song, darling.” Phryne hummed the last of the tune. “Reminds me of Paris - remember that club down in Montparnasse where we ended up singing to pay for the drinks?”

“Don’t remind me,” Mac groaned. “ _That_ was definitely not my finest hour.”

“I don’t know about that - I think it was your singing that got us the Pernod, not mine.”

Mac made a retching noise. “I still can’t drink that.”

“Me neither.” Phryne reached for her whisky. “I like to think my tastes have grown up since then.”

Mac shook her head and opened her mouth as if to speak, but a huge yawn escaped instead.

“You, my darling, need to go home.” Phryne drained her glass. Mac suddenly looked exhausted; the release of the short burst of dancing had finished her.  “I can drop you off if you like.”

“No.” Mac shook her head. “Thanks, but I’ll just stay here, I think. I have an early start in the morning.”

Phryne had expected as much, and she was already shaking her head as she stood up. “No, you won’t. If you don’t want to go home you can stay with me. But you need a good nights’ sleep in a proper bed.”

Mac looked as if she was going to argue, but Phryne held out a hand. She knew that if her friend was left to her own devices she would be up most of the night trying to work, trying to keep her mind busy, and would be exhausted by morning. Not to mention that most of the whisky would probably be gone. Perhaps not such a bad thing, but there was a better alternative and she intended Mac to take it.

“That’s settled then.” She hauled Mac to her feet. “Get your shoes on. Oh, and by the way…” Mac’s yawn had reminded her. “Do you know a Dr Hoyland?”

“Hoyland?” Mac paused in the middle of tying one shoelace. “No, I don’t think so. Why?”

“There was a bottle of barbiturates in the bathroom at the Coopers’. Prescribed for Ben by a Dr Hoyland. I wondered if you knew of him or her.”

“Well, it’s definitely not a her or I would know.”

“They’re commonly used for sleeping, yes?”

Mac nodded as she stood up. “Yes, although they’re strong. A doctor would only prescribe them on a regular basis if the patient was having real issues with insomnia.”

“Hmm.”

“What was the date on the bottle?”

“Recent. And it was half empty.”

“So if he’d gone somewhere of his own accord, he probably would have taken them with him?”  
  
“I think so.” Phryne shook her head. She didn’t want to to think about it now, and Mac was certainly too tired. It could all wait until the morning, when they would have more results back from the battery of tests and screenings that every body was subjected to. They could ascertain that there was nothing else untoward. And then they could start looking for the knife. Besides, her mind was still buzzing with the blues, and she found herself humming once more as she threw her arm over Mac’s shoulders.

_They say I do it, ain't nobody caught me_

_Sure got to prove it on me…_


	10. Chapter 10

“So this is what happens down here before nine.” Phryne entered the kitchen, still rather bleary-eyed and dressed in her silk pyjamas. The room was bustling with Dot, and Mr Butler, and Mac sitting at the table, devouring toast as fast as it was made and flipping through the autopsy folder.Phryne smiled as she plopped down in a chair. She loved her little family, however unusual it was, and Mac was the only other person she knew who could read about dead bodies and eat at the same time.

“Some tea, Miss?”

“Oh, yes please, Dot.” She yawned and stretched, acknowledging Mac’s vague wave. “Did you sleep well, Mac?”

“Like a log.”

“Jane’s already left, Miss.’ Dot poured Phryne some tea, and she smiled her thanks. “Said she had a chemistry test that she didn’t want to be late for.”

“Chemistry was never my strong point. I would have skipped school completely.”

“If only you had,” Mac murmured as she turned a page, “instead of setting the lab on fire.”

“That was an accident!” Phryne protested, reaching for some toast. “And besides, it made a wonderful bang.”

“I prefer my bangs controlled. Preferably without the green smoke.”

“That was the _pièce de resistance_!”

“So not an accident then,” Mac mused, and Phryne shrugged innocently.

“You have to admit it was fun.”

“What was fun?”

“Jack!” Phryne looked up, pleasantly surprised. He was hovering by the open back door, hat in hand, and she waved him in, waiting until he was settled and Mr Butler had brought an extra cup and plate. “Mac was just telling me off for blowing up the chemistry lab at school.”

“Why does that not surprise me?”

“I was only nine. I thought it showed some rather enterprising scientific skill, myself.”

“How were you not expelled, Miss Fisher?”

“Oh, she was.” Mac rolled her eyes.

“Several times. Aunt Prudence took it upon herself to intervene on my behalf. God only knows why. She still blames me for turning her hair grey early.” She reached over Mac for another piece of toast. “Anyway, Inspector. What brings you here at such an early hour?”

“It’s almost nine, Miss Fisher. I was just wondering if there’s been any progress on…” He broke off, his question already answered as Mac passed him the file from the autopsy. “Thank you.”

“It’s not completed yet.” Mac waved her toast at the file. “The toxicology reports and so on haven’t come back. But it was most likely the knife wound that killed him. Time of death was around 36 hours before he was found. Give or take.”

“Around the time of the fight, then.” Jack flipped through the folder, his brow furrowed. “And someone knew what they were doing.”

“It appears that way.”

“So who would have that kind of knowledge?”

“And that kind of strength.” Mac brushed herself off as she stood up. “It’s not just knowing where to stick the knife, it’s having the strength and accuracy - in what was presumably the heat of the moment - to make one stab fatal. There’s no signs of a struggle, either. No sign on the body that he tried to defend himself.”

“So he possibly knew whoever it was,” Phryne mused. “And they must have been light on their feet. Quick.”

“I’ll let you have the lab reports as soon as I can.” Mac waved to Jack and bent down to give Phryne a kiss on the cheek on her way out, but Phryne caught her arm.

“Are you going to see Martha?”

Mac hesitated, her eyes flicking to Jack and clouding over somewhat. “I don’t know. I’m at the hospital later.”

“Go and see her, Mac.” Phryne’s voice was soft. “As a doctor if nothing else. Make sure she’s ok. She didn’t look well yesterday, and we’ll need to bring her in for questioning at some point soon.”

Mac breathed in, deeply, and nodded once.

“Is that a good idea?” Jack queried as the back door shut behind her. Phryne shrugged, gazing thoughtfully after her friend and chewing slowly on her toast. 

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “But Mac’ll do her own thing anyway, and Martha really didn’t look good yesterday when I dropped her off. I don’t want to try and question her if she’s not up to it.” She shook her head, trying to clear it of what felt like cobwebs from too many strands of thought, and turned her attention to the folder that Jack was still holding. “The gymnasium, then?”

“Seems like as good a place as any to start.” Jack tossed the folder down on the table, and looked at Phryne. “Quick. Light. Accurate. Remind you of anyone?”

“She’s not the only woman boxer there, Jack.”

“No, but she is the best.”

“And so is her sister, who she was fighting at the time of the murder,” Phryne reminded him, pushing her chair back. “Come on.”

“Aren’t you going to get some clothes on first?”

“Why, do you want me to?”

He rolled his eyes at the flirtatious smile that was intended to distract from her swift grab for the last slice of toast - a grab that failed as he got there first, holding it aloft triumphantly. “Mine, Miss Fisher. And yes. While those pyjamas are very fetching, I think you might be a little cold outside in them. Not to mention the reaction you’d get down at the sports club.”

“Spoilsport.” She pretended to pout as she turned towards the door. “But if you insist.”

*

 

As it happened, she wasn’t sure that she was any warmer than she would have been in pyjamas. The spring breeze that had felt so tempting the previous evening had turned nasty overnight, bringing a last blast of winter and making her shiver through the black and white coat that she had chosen. The thin black top and cream trousers did little to keep out the chill. She was glad to get inside the club; even the short walk from the car had made her cold. The price she paid for the hint of warmth, though, was the stale smell of sweat, the grunting and slapping and panting of a training session, and she wrinkled her nose. Despite her reassuring words to Dot that pugilism, properly studied, was a noble art even for women, she still didn’t like it.

“Dead?”

She remembered the two men from their previous visit. They were joined this time by another, lithe and fit despite appearing to be in his early fifties. It was this man who had spoken, echoing Jack’s last word in a parroting of disbelief.

“I’m afraid so, Mr…”

“Murphy.” The man seemed dazed by the news, his Irish accent even more pronounced because of it. “Col Murphy.”

Phryne exchanged a glance with Jack. “You used to be a coach here, didn’t you?”

“Uh…yeah. Yeah, I did.” He ran a hand over his face and around his neck. His shock seemed genuine, Phryne thought. “Quit a while back, but I still keep a hand in.”

“Why did you leave?”

“I…” He stopped rubbing his neck, and looked at first Phryne, then Jack. Would he tell the truth, she wondered? It looked as if he was making his mind up. Either that or concocting a quick lie. “What happened to him?”

“He was murdered.” Jack’s statement was matter-of-fact. “Knifed.”

“Jesus.” Murphy looked stunned. “I didn’t like the guy, but knifed?”

“Why did you leave, Mr Murphy?”

“Sorry.” He ran a hand over his face. “Honestly, Inspector? I didn’t like the way Connolly did things.”

The truth it was, then.

“In what way?”

“He was too tough. He pushed some of them too hard, to the point of getting injured. He said it was good for their character.” Murphy walked over to a bench and picked up a towel, draping it around his neck and absentmindedly rubbing the ends of it against his chest. “And he was the one who wanted to bring women in.”

“You didn’t?”

He shook his head. “Nope. Not here, not with the guys who already train.” He shot a glance over to the other side of the ring, where George Doonan and Ralph Jones had resumed slapping a punchbag, casting glances their way every so often. “It was just going to cause trouble. I have nothing against women boxing in principle, but this wasn’t the place for it.”

“But Connolly insisted?”

“He always got his way.” Murphy shook his head. “First he opened it for women to train, then he started organising fights. Those Cooper sisters brought that on. Eddie wasn’t so keen at first, but when he realised how those two fought all he saw were the pound signs. Not sure how much he got of the money, though.”

“Did you ever train them? Anna or Martha?”

“Both, occasionally, but not out of choice, Inspector.”

Jack nodded. “Connolly was murdered with a knife, Mr Murphy. A little like this one here, we believe.” Phryne held up her own knife, letting Murphy take a good look before tucking it safely away in her handbag. Even she had conceded that the garter probably wasn’t the best place for it in this situation. “Know anyone who might own something like this?”

“No.” He shook his head. “Never seen anyone flashing a knife around here. They’d be thrown out if they did.”

“Anyone who might want to harm Mr Connolly?”

“Take your pick.” Murphy snorted in disgust. “You want the truth? I got out before I murdered him myself. And any one of those women he trained…well. I wouldn’t blame them.”

“And yet they kept coming back for more,” Phryne mused, her eyebrows raised. “Why was that, Mr Murphy?”

“Nowhere else around here trains women, Miss. And I guess some of them need all the help they can get. Wherever it comes from."

“The Coopers too?”

“Nah.” He shook his head, a flicker of puzzlement crossing his face. “Never could figure out why they stuck it - I figured in the end they just enjoyed it. They weren’t from the rough areas like the others, and they always scrubbed up smart.”

“Did their brother ever train here?”

“Brother?” The puzzled look deepened. “I didn’t know they had a brother.”

Phryne felt Jack’s eyes on her. She could almost hear his thoughts, sense his immediate question. _So what about the alibi for the night of the murder?_

“What year did you leave here, Mr Murphy?”

“Uh…let’s see…” He thought for a moment. “1925”.

“Do you remember the murder of a Robert Gordon? 1924. His body was found near here.”

“Yeah.” Murphy nodded. “Yeah, I remember.”

“Jamie Connolly said that Ben Cooper - Anna and Martha’s brother - was training here the night of the murder. Said it was a regular occurrence. But you don’t remember him at all?”

“No, sorry. Maybe he was one that Connolly kept for himself. He did that sometimes, if he thought a guy - or girl - was particularly good.”

It wasn’t a particularly convincing explanation, and as they walked back out to the car - Doonan and Jones having been less cooperative than monkeys - Phryne felt a sinking feeling in her stomach. If Ben Cooper had no alibi for the Robert Gordon murder after all, and now he was missing in action…

“I should warn Mac. I told her to go over there and check on Martha.”

Jack wrenched open the car door for her. “She’s in no danger, Phryne. It’s the sisters I’m more concerned about.”

“You really think he did it?”

“I think it’s a distinct possibility.” His jaw was tight. “It was only that alibi that saved him from the Gordon murder.”

“But why would he murder the man who gave him the alibi in the first place?”

“Didn’t you say he owed Connolly money?”

“That was the rumour at the time.”

“So what if Connolly only gave him the alibi to make sure that he repaid the debt? If Ben went to jail for murder, then Connolly would never have seen his money again.”

Phryne nodded slowly, her elbow resting on the top of the car door as she thought. “Jack, what if Connolly was still collecting the debt?”

“The betting money?”

She nodded, the sick feeling in her stomach intensifying as a few strands of thought began to weave and stick together in her mind. “Think about it. No one seems to know what happened to the betting money from the women’s fights. But it was only really Anna and Martha who brought any money in. It doesn’t seem like any of the other women were worth bothering with, not on the same scale. Connolly organised it all. What if he was keeping the money as repayment?”  
  
“You mean the sisters were repaying Ben’s debt for him by fighting?”

“Or they were forced into it. ” Phryne looked up at him, and saw those deep eyes reflecting her own growing horror. “Martha said they started training at the club about five years ago. 1924. The same year as the murder.”

“But Anna was worried about Ben. She was distraught when she first came and said he was missing. Surely if he was forcing them into it, then…”

“She wouldn’t have known then that Connolly was dead, not unless she did it.” Phryne shook her head. “What if she was terrified of Connolly? Perhaps she thought Connolly had got rid of him somehow, or that they’d had a fight about the money that went wrong?”

Jack nodded. “We need to talk to them.”

“You don’t think he’d harm them?” Phryne climbed into the car. “If he did murder Connolly, then most likely it was to stop the blackmail. To protect his sisters.”

“Maybe, but we don’t know any of this for sure. I’d rather be safe than sorry.”

It was a short drive to the house, and Jack drove fast. She refrained from commenting on it. Normally, she would have made a joke, teased him for not taking his own advice on safe driving, but she was too worried. She didn’t think Anna and Martha were in any danger, but their theory about Ben was working on her mind. The more she thought about it, the more sure she became.

“Do you think they’re protecting him?”

“I think Anna is.” Jack slowed down to take a corner. “I’m not so sure about Martha. She doesn’t seem to be that fond of either him or her sister.”

“And yet she’s kept quiet.”

“Family bonds, Phryne.”

She tilted her head in silent acknowledgement. She knew those all too well.

Whatever she had expected when they arrived, though, it was not Martha, opening the front door before they had even rung the bell. Her coat and gloves were neat, her hat held firmly in her hand as if she were about to go out, but she looked as if she hadn’t slept all night.

“Miss Cooper? We’d like a few words with you and your sister, if she’s in.”

“Inspector.” Martha acknowledged him with a set tilt to her jaw. “She is in, but it won’t be necessary.” Her gaze shifted to Phryne. “I’ll come with you.”

“Martha, we just need to ask some questions.” Phryne reached out a hand to reassure her, but Martha just shook her head. She was, Phryne realised, shaking. “It won’t take that long.”

“No.” Martha closed the door firmly behind her, and put her hat on. “You don’t understand. I was actually just about to come to the station, but since you’ve saved me the bother…”

“Martha, what do you mean?”

“I killed him.” Martha took a deep breath, so deep that Phryne could hear it, and exhaled slowly. It was almost, she thought, like a sigh of relief. “I killed him, Miss Fisher. So can we please just get this over with?”


	11. Chapter 11

Mac paused at the door to the cell, taking in the scene before her. She was vaguely aware of Jack behind her, his hand resting on the bars of the door, and of Phryne behind him, but all of her attention was focused on the woman who sat, head in hands, on the wooden bench that ran down one wall. The smart coat she was wearing jarred against the scuffiness of the walls, her shoes too shiny against the grubby floor. She looked totally out of place. Lost. Alone.

For the first time in a long time, Mac felt completely lost herself.

“I told them not to call you.” Martha lifted her head as Jack shut the door behind Mac. She knew that he would stay, watching and listening on the other side. Phryne too. But she didn’t care what they heard. Martha looked terrible. Her face was tear streaked, and her fading bruise, without its covering of makeup, stood out like a single storm cloud on the softness of her cheek.

“Neither of them ever does as they’re told.”

Martha didn’t say anything. She didn’t look at Mac; her eyes rested instead on the floor, somewhere down near her feet. The clock in the corridor outside sounded oppressively loud, and Mac caught Martha’s perfume mingling with the mustiness of the cell. Spice, and jasmine, and the unwashed smell of whoever had been in here before her. Mac closed her eyes against it, a momentary surge of anger against Jack welling up inside her that died down just as quickly. He had just been doing his job, but it didn’t fit. It was all wrong.

“What are you doing here, Martha?”

But there was no response.

“Why did you say you killed him when you didn’t?”

“I did.” The reply was quiet, dead, and Mac shook her head. Walking the couple of steps over to the bench, she crouched down in front of Martha and reached out a hand. Gently, her fingers titled Martha’s chin up so that she could see her face. Martha’s expression was set, but those blue eyes, Mac realised, were brimming with tears.

“No, love,” she said softly. “You didn’t.”

“I did,” Martha insisted, a hot tear escaping the corner of her eye. Mac caught it with her thumb, her gut wrenching.

“How?”

“What do you mean, how?”

“How did you kill him?”

“Does it matter?” Martha was crying properly now, the tears sliding freely down her cheeks. “For God’s sake. I’ve confessed. Do you really need the details?”

Mac nodded, bracing herself inwardly. The details were precisely what was missing. When Phryne had telephoned, her voice tight and slightly shocked with the news that Martha had confessed but wouldn’t say anything else, Mac had instinctively felt that something was off. When she had arrived at the station, shocked and horrified and slightly sick herself, both Jack and Phryne had felt the same. But with Martha refusing to talk further, Jack had had no choice but to put her in a cell.

“Humour me.”

Martha shook her head, covering her face with her hands again as she wept, and it felt like every cell in Mac’s body was crying out to hold her, to soothe her, to make it go away. She didn’t. She couldn’t.

But she would wait for as long as it took.

Eventually the sobbing subsided, and Martha took a deep, shuddering breath.

“Sleeping medicine.” Her voice was croaky. “He always carried a hip flask, and Ben had barbiturates. I didn’t mean for them to kill him, I just wanted to knock him out for the fight, but…”

Mac rocked back on her heels. Relief flooded through her body, tension that she didn’t realise she’d been holding seeming to evaporate into the cold air of the cell. Turning her head briefly, she saw Jack nodding.

“Martha.” She took hold of Martha’s hands, gently prising each finger away from Martha’s face. “Look at me.” She waited until Martha complied before continuing, and this time she allowed her fingers to stroke Martha’s cheek, wiping away the last of the tears, soothing the outline of the bruise. “Jamie Connolly died of a stab wound. Not from an overdose of sleeping medicine.”

“But…”

“You didn’t kill him, Martha.” She drove the point home, her gaze firm. “Not unless you stabbed him after you drugged him.”

Martha looked confused, dazed. “But he drank it. All of it.” Her eyes pleaded with Mac to believe her, but Mac shook her head again and cupped Martha’s face in her hands.

“No, love, listen to me. You didn’t kill him.” She paused, hoping it would sink in. “There were enough barbiturates in his system to flatten him for a couple of hours, but not enough to kill him.”

“He was stabbed?” Martha’s whisper was disbelieving, but there was a faint flicker of hope in her eyes.

“Yes.”

“And you’re sure that killed him?”

Mac chuckled despite herself. “Yes. I’m sure.”

“So then…”

“Perhaps now would be a good time to start this again in the interview room?”

Mac turned. Jack was unlocking the door of the cell, and she pushed herself up, holding out a hand to Martha. She knew there were still so many questions, not least of which was who had actually stabbed the man after he had been drugged - drugged enough that he wouldn’t have been able to fight back. But it hadn’t been Martha. Of that she was certain. Martha’s belief that she had killed him had been genuine; she’d had no idea that someone else was involved. Neither, it seemed, had she intended to make the killer’s job easier.

“Do you want me to stay?” Her question was directed at Jack, not Martha, and he nodded, standing aside.

“I think that would help.”

 

*

 

“Start from the beginning.”

Martha didn’t look at her, but Mac felt the pressure on her fingers tighten and she squeezed back. She was sitting next to Martha, with Jack leaning back in his chair on the other side of the table and Phryne standing by the window. Vaguely, she wondered how Jack would explain away her presence at the formal interview, if he was ever asked. As the medical examiner, possibly. Certainly not as the suspect’s lover. She knew he was breaking most of the established protocols in allowing her to be there. It benefited him, but she wasn’t sure whether to be grateful or not.

“The beginning’s a long time ago, Inspector.”

“May 1924, to be precise?”

Martha nodded. Her eyes fixed on a point on the table as she talked, the story spilling out in such an emotionless stream that it made Mac ache. She could feel the tension instead in Martha’s fingers. She could feel the tears, and the anger, and the disgust, and she squeezed tighter.

She had shielded herself from this kind of emotion, from this kind of entanglement, for so long. She wasn’t sure she was ready for it now, but she couldn’t seem to help herself.

“Ben’s a supervisor at the docks - you know that.” Martha didn’t wait for either Phryne or Jack to confirm. “He took the job after Mother went into the home. It was the only way, for her - we couldn’t cope with her after Father died - but it had to be paid for. The job paid decent enough wages, but not enough. Ben liked to drink, he liked to gamble, especially when he came back from France. He said he’d gambled with everything over there. Money was nothing after that.” She paused. “He knew Jamie from the bars. Jamie would encourage him, rile him up into one more bet, one more drink. He ended up owing Jamie hundreds. But then he got…involved with something.”

“The drugs?”

“Yes.” Martha whispered, looking up at Phryne, and then continuing in a stronger voice. “It was already going on. I don’t know how he got involved, but soon he was just about running it on the docks.”

“Did he tell you that?”

“He bragged about it.” The disgust creeping into Martha’s voice was clear. “One night, when he was drunk. He couldn’t resist it.”

“But then it went wrong.”

“He only told us afterwards.” Martha closed her eyes, remembering, her whole body rigid with the effort of controlling herself. “He said that one man - Robert Gordon - had got greedy and Ben…he said he just lost it. Not just because of the money. He couldn’t stand the thought that someone was doing that right under his nose, and he…”

“He killed him.”

“Yes.” Martha’s voice cracked. “Jamie had helped him deal with the body afterwards, and gave him an alibi, but then of course he wanted paying back.” Her lip curled with sudden anger, and she took a deep breath. “Ben effectively owed Jamie his life. But with the drugs operation stopped, he didn’t know what to do.”

“Who came up with the idea for you two to fight?”

“Jamie.” Martha ran a hand over her face. “He knew what a crowd two women fighting could draw. He told Ben that we could fight each other at the club, and that he would keep the betting money.” She paused. “He said he would enjoy it as well, and that would be almost as good as the money.”

Mac heard Phryne draw a sharp breath in through her teeth and she caught her eyes, held them for support, as if they were Phryne’s hands.

“We had no choice.” For the first time, Martha looked squarely at Jack. “I know we did wrong in not saying anything. But he was our brother. We couldn’t just see him hang - and if he had, Mother would have died too. The shock would have killed her.” She paused. “I wanted to leave. I was too scared of him after everything, but Anna wouldn’t come. She kept saying that we needed to try and help him, that he was our brother and he was all we had left. I couldn’t just leave her. I don’t like her much, but she’s my sister.”

“So you agreed to fight.”

Martha nodded miserably. “Jamie trained us. He played on our dislike for each other, told us to bring it all into the ring. I knew it was wrong. it made me sick every time, but…” She shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. Something takes hold of you, in the ring with the crowd, and besides, Jamie always knew if we played it gentle deliberately.”

“How did Anna feel about it?”

“She just wanted to help Ben.” Martha spread her hands in a gesture of surrender: Anna’s surrender, Mac thought, not hers. “She and Ben were close, Inspector. Very close. She would have done anything for him, even after everything that had happened and even after she realised what he was capable of. She was scared, but she loved him.”

“Tell me about the night of the last fight.”

“I’d had enough.” Martha looked up, and Mac saw her eyes shining with clear defiance. “Jamie had told me to throw the fight. He said more people were starting to bet on me winning, and he wanted to keep them on their toes. Wanted to keep the money coming in.” She shrugged. “It made me angry. I was sick of the whole thing, and I hated it, but I’m damn good at it and for once I didn’t want to do as he said. My way of rebelling, I suppose, but I was still scared of the consequences. So I slipped him Ben’s barbiturates to keep him away from the fight. Ben took so many of them - he was addicted - I knew he wouldn’t miss them. Jamie always carried a hip flask, so it was easy enough. I figured he’d just sleep for a few hours, and when he woke up after the fight I’d be long gone.”

“You were planning on leaving?”

Martha nodded. “Like I said, I’d had enough. Anna and I were arguing all the time. I couldn’t make her see sense. She couldn’t see how twisted the whole thing was, and I…” Her voice broke. “I was desperate.”

“And then we spoiled your plans.”

“You did.” Martha flashed a brief, pale smile at Jack. “I lost anyway - Anna was on fire that night. She was late, but then made up for it.” She grimaced. “And then I ended up being patched up and put to bed for the night with concussion rather than getting on the train like I planned.”

“You still could have gone.”

“I was intending to. But then Anna came and said Ben had disappeared, and…well.” She broke off, but Mac felt a warmth spread through her fingers. “Then Jamie was found dead, and I thought I’d killed him. I was terrified. I thought you’d find out sooner rather than later, and I knew I couldn’t live with that. I didn’t want to turn out as bad as Ben.”

“Did anyone know that you were planning on leaving?”

“Anna.” Martha looked down at the table. “We had a big argument, the day before the fight, and I let it slip.”

“Martha,” Mac watched as Phryne pulled out a chair and sat, leaning forward. “What happened to Jamie?”

“I don’t know.” Martha looked her in the eyes. “I saw him like I said. He came by while I was warming up. He always came to see me first, then Anna.”

“Is that when you slipped him the barbiturates?”

“Yes.” Martha nodded. “It was easy enough. He always had that flask with him, and he put it down for a moment. I asked him if I could have a drink. He just laughed and told me to go ahead, said it might help me off my fight. I slipped it in when he wasn’t looking.”

“And then what?”

Martha shrugged. “The fight started at seven. Anna was late, by about ten minutes. But like I said, she made up for it. She hammered me. I’d never seen her like that before, but I assumed it was just the fallout from our argument the day before.”

“And you didn’t know anything about Ben visiting the club that night?”

“No.”

“Where is Ben now, Martha?”

“I have no idea.” Martha looked from Phryne, to Jack, and back to Phryne again. “Honestly. I don’t know.”

Finally, for a moment, there was silence.

Mac felt drained. Her fingers were still entwined with Martha’s, and yet she felt the distance. She couldn’t begin to imagine what Martha was feeling. She didn’t know what the repercussions would be. She didn’t know how to comfort her, or even whether Martha would want her to. It was beyond what she felt she could deal with, and yet she didn’t want to move her hand away.

“Where is Anna now?”

Martha looked startled by the question. “I…she’s at home. Or she was when we left.”

Mac saw Phryne and Jack exchange a look, one that she knew so well by now. It was a thousand words exchanged without speaking, words that flashed so quickly it was hard for anyone else to read.

“Inspector?” It was the first time she had spoken throughout the entire interview, but she wanted to know.

“Ok, Miss Cooper. You’re free to go…for now.”

“I…what?” Martha looked stunned, and Mac blinked. “But I drugged him.”

“You did, yes.”

“I didn’t tell anyone about Ben.”

“No, you didn’t.” Jack sighed, and pushed back his chair. “But you didn’t kill anyone either. And at the moment, catching whoever _did_ is what I’m concerned about. Not locking you up for acting in self defence.”

“Ben?”

“Yes.” Jack nodded. “I would advise that you don’t go home, Martha.”

“But what about Anna?”

“We’ll go and find her.”

“You can go to Wardlow.” Phryne looked from Martha to Mac. “Both of you.” But as Jack led Martha out, she took hold of Mac’s arm, holding her back. “Mac…be careful.”

“What’s going on, Phryne?” Mac felt suddenly helpless, and her hissed whisper was frustrated with the effort of trying to keep up. “I feel like I’ve just been hit with a steam train. Who am I supposed to be being careful of, her? Or the brother?”

Phryne’s arms wrapped around her, a warm embrace of soft cotton and perfume, and Mac unexpectedly felt tears bubbling up deep inside. She knew Phryne felt them too; a hand rubbed her back, holding her close, and Phryne’s voice was soft in her ear.

“I think it’s a little late to be careful where Martha’s concerned, however much you don’t want to admit it.” She let go slowly, her hands still rubbing Mac’s arms soothingly. “I meant Ben. We still don’t know where he is or what state of mind he might be in. My gun’s in the bedside drawer if you need it.”

Mac ran a hand over her face, pinching the bridge of her nose. “How did I get myself into this?”

“Blame Jack.” Phryne’s smile was light. “He called you in the first place.”

“Hmm.” Mac followed Phryne down the corridor, using the few steps to pull herself together. Martha, she knew, would be waiting in reception. “Blame the man. I like your thinking.”


	12. Chapter 12

She sat in Phryne’s parlour, her legs swung over the side of her chair and her shoes kicked off. The sun had already sunk into an inky dusk, but she hadn’t bothered to switch on the lamp. The fire had been lit when they had arrived, a ready drink waiting and Mr Butler’s calming presence in the background; Dot had disappeared off the pictures with Collins ( _“Coquette, Doctor, it’s a talking picture from start to finish”)._ She had work on her lap. A book that she really should have been reading for a lecture that she was supposed to be giving, but she couldn’t concentrate. She had held it open at the same page for the past half hour, while the drink in her hand was slipping down a bit too easily. She could sense Martha’s eyes on her. Twice, now, she had heard the intake of breath that usually precipitated a voice, but nothing had been spoken out loud. The room felt heavy with anticipation, but anticipation of what, she didn’t know.

“Are you actually going to read that?”

Mac sighed. It was too obvious, and she flicked the book closed. “It seems not.” She contemplated her glass before draining it, wondering if Phryne had any cigarettes lying around. She had left hers in the morgue office earlier.

“So can we talk?”

“I thought you would have had enough of that.” She raised her eyes to meet Martha’s for the first time since settling in the parlour, and tried to soften the clipped tone of her voice. Martha, she saw, looked genuinely distressed. “How are you feeling?”

“Like hell.” Martha leaned back, her head resting against the soft velvet of the chaise. “I’m sorry.”

“Love, you don’t have anything to be sorry for.” Mac shook her head. She didn’t know what else to say. She couldn’t blame Martha, for any of it. Lord only knew what she would have done in the same situation, and if there was one thing she had learned over the years it was never to judge. “You did what you had to do.”

“But what if he’s killed other people?”

“I doubt it.” She actually wasn’t sure at all. She had no idea, but she was trying to be careful. Diplomatic. It wasn’t her strong point, and she was floundering a little. “Try not to think about it. They’ll find him, and then we’ll know more.”

Martha nodded slowly, and they lapsed into silence again; a silence that wasn’t as quite as heavy now it had been broken, but that still settled between them. She wasn’t sure how to lift it. She had so many questions, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answers. It was easier to let them swirl around in her mind, easier to wander over to the sideboard in search of another drink and Phryne’s emergency packet of cigarettes, easier to tidy away her book. Anything but ask.

“You know that’s why I didn’t call you.”

“You don’t need to explain.”

“But I want to.” Martha stood up and walked over to the mantel, standing where Mac had no choice but to look at her. “I thought I would be leaving. And I liked you too much to see you again and then for you to be left wondering where I’d gone.”

“What makes you think I would have been wondering?” But immediately she shook her head at herself, hearing her defensiveness and seeing her slightly snappy tone reflected in Martha’s eyes. “I’m sorry. Forget I said that.”

“No, don’t be.” Martha took the cigarette from her fingers, taking a long drag before handing it back. “I deserved it.”

“No. No, you didn’t.” Mac sighed. “But we were hardly together, Martha, you don’t need to make it into anything big.”

“What if I want to?”

“Martha…”

“No, don’t.” Martha shook her head, her eyes sparking with emotion that Mac couldn’t quite define. “I like you, Elizabeth. I like you a lot.”

What could she say to that? _The truth,_ a little voice in her head whispered. _I like you a lot too._ It sounded so childish. Why, she wondered, did the truth always sound so innocent and carefree? So simple?

“It’s not exactly the best timing.”

“No timing is ever good.” Martha cupped Mac’s face in one hand. She looked pale. Exhausted. Mac couldn’t blame her, and despite herself she turned her lips to press against Martha’s fingers. “Please.”

Mac tossed the cigarette into the fire and reached out, tentatively pulling Martha close until their foreheads were touching. She closed her eyes. Breathed in.

It all felt so damn good.

“You might still be leaving.”

“For jail, you mean?” Martha huffed with soft laughter, and Mac smiled. She didn’t know why they were laughing. They should have been crying. “True. But I doubt it. For some reason the Inspector seems willing to push me under the carpet.”

“What will you do?”

“I don’t know.” Martha’s thumb was steadily, softly stroking Mac’s cheek, and Mac kept her eyes closed. She wanted this little world, not the outside one. She wanted the warmth of the fire, and Martha; her scent, her fingers, her voice. “There wasn’t much before this. I was 14 when the war broke out, and then when it ended everything had already changed.” Her voice was soft, her lips warm near Mac’s. “And…I don’t know. This is going to sound awful.”

“What is?”

“I’ll miss it,” Martha whispered.

“Boxing?” She felt Martha nod in response, and tightened her grip on Martha’s arms. She understood that.

“Does that make me a terrible person?”

“No, love.” Mac shook her head against Martha’s, allowed her hands to wander to Martha’s shoulder, her neck. “No, it doesn’t.” She took a deep breath, her eyes still closed. Everything was easier that way. “I missed the war, when it ended. I think a lot of us did…not the fighting and the carnage, of course not that, but the sense of having a purpose. Even the ones who didn’t fight had something to fight for. And then one day it was over.” She paused, letting the faded memories wash over her. “I was lucky. I had something to come back to. A lot didn’t.”

The silence this time felt light, warm, full of understanding.

“You don’t need to give it up, you know.”

Martha sighed. “I’m not sure I could carry on.”

“There are options.” She stroked her fingers over Martha’s cheek, letting her skin soak in the feel of her. “If you want to. You could run classes for women yourself - Phryne would help you with that.”

“She doesn’t disapprove?”

“Of you, or of women boxing?”

Martha chuckled. “Either. Both.”

“Neither. She’d be the first one in the ring.”

“Maybe. But not just yet.”

She understood that, as well.

“You’ll never guess what I wanted to do. Before all this.” Martha’s voice slipped into the quiet.

“What?” She sensed Martha smile, and she could see it in her mind; a self-deprecating smile that curved one side of her red mouth, her lips pursed a little. It made Mac want to kiss her.

“I wanted to open a dance school.”

“You did?” Mac’s eyes popped open, and Martha laughed.

“Yes, I did. Ironic, isn’t it? The boxer on the dance floor. I’m good, though.”

“I know you are.” And she did. She thought back, to that night in the club when the band had been playing and most of her senses had been lost in a haze of cocktails and music and the woman who kept catching her eye. Martha had looked sensational when she danced. “But now I’m even more pleased that I didn’t disgrace myself by asking you onto the floor.”

“You can remedy that sometime.” Martha tilted her head, and Mac found herself swimming in blue. “I want to dance with you.”

“Trust me, you don’t.”

“You’re good.” She didn’t ask how Martha was so sure. “And it wouldn’t matter anyway.”

“Your feet might disagree.”

“i’ll let them decide for themselves.” Mac felt herself being pulled closer, gently but firmly. Martha’s hips were swaying to a slow rhythm and she let herself be taken, allowed her body to soften against Martha’s and to be led in barely-there movements, not even a breath between them, so different from the way she had danced with Phryne. Slowly, the day fell away, melting under Martha’s touch. Everything fell away.

Only when the song ended, the song that she had never even heard, did she let herself kiss.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woohoo! So I'm posting the last two chapters in one go (well, one chapter and an epilogue, really) since I figure you've all been patient enough with this - my grand plan of posting twice a week went horribly wrong! Thank you all so much for reading, commenting, kudosing, and for sticking with this. I really appreciate it :). 
> 
> Onwards!

They arrived at the house just as the sun was setting, the light in parlour window betraying the presence of someone inside. Phryne hoped it was Anna. She and Jack hadn’t talked much on the drive from the police station, but she felt his tension. He hated situations like this, she knew. Too many unknowns. There was an unspoken recognition between them that they should be prepared for anything - for Ben being there, for Anna not being there, for something to have happened - but by the time they pulled up she was glad to get out.

“Someone’s home.”

It was Anna who answered the door, her eyes widening as she saw who it was.

“Inspector! Miss Fisher…what’s happened?”

“May we come in, Miss Cooper?”

“Of course.”

She stood aside to let them pass, gesturing them towards the parlour, a decent-sized room with an air of faded grandeur. Most of the furniture belonged to another era; heavy, and ornate, and oozing memories long forgotten by everyone else. Anna’s book lay face down on a table, and Phryne thought that the room suited her much more than it did Martha. She couldn’t imagine Martha ever having been very comfortable or relaxed here.

“Can I get you a drink?”

“No, thank you.” Jack shook his head, hat in hand, and stood rather than sitting. Phryne, too, declined a seat. Instead, she wandered over to the window. A small mahogany writing desk sat in front of it, the chair facing out onto the slightly untidy garden rather than into the room, and she guessed that this too was Anna’s. The garden matched the house. A little unkempt, a whisper of history.

“Is it Martha? Has something happened?”

“No, Miss Cooper, your sister’s fine. She was just helping us with some enquiries.”

“Oh.” Anna hovered by the sofa. “I thought she must be in some kind of trouble. When she left with you earlier.”

“Just routine questions.”

But Phryne noted that Anna didn’t bother to ask where Martha was now.

“Anna, your sister told us about Ben.”

“What about him?”

“Everything.” Jack’s voice had a no-nonsense edge to it. “Starting with the drugs smuggling at the docks and ending the night of the fight three days ago.”

Anna started at him for a long moment, the worry on her face dissolving into disbelief, anger, panic. She whispered something that Phryne didn’t catch, shaking her head. _No._

“Why?”

“I presume she was tired of lying.”

Anna sat down heavily, her face in her hands. “And Ben?”

“We don’t know, Miss Cooper.” Jack leaned against the mantel. “That’s why we’re here. Are you sure you don’t know where he is?”

“I’m sure.” Anna’s cracked voice was muffled between her fingers. “I told you, he left the gymnasium that night and never came back.”

Phryne sighed, and turned from the window. She was about to tell Anna that she shouldn’t be here alone, that her brother had killed one man and was suspected of killing another, when something caught her eye. Something on the desk that glinted innocently in the evening light that streamed through the window, and she felt her stomach lurch.

_Jack._ She lifted her eyes to his, and picked up the letter knife carefully. It was the perfect size. She saw the shock and understanding cross his face in an instant, saw his mind slotting it all together at the same time as hers.

They had been so blind.

“Did he get rid of the body for you, Anna?” Her voice was quiet, and Anna’s head lifted from her hands, her eyes widening as she saw the knife in Phryne’s fingers. “He was there, but he didn’t kill Jamie, did he? You did. You were late to the fight because you’d just stabbed him.”

Anna stared, and for a second Phryne thought she would run. But then the fear and shock in her eyes dissolved, and instead of bolting for the door she slumped back into her seat. She looked defeated. Letting out the breath that she hadn’t realised she’d been holding, Phryne handed the knife to Jack, who took it with his handkerchief, and sat down on the chair opposite Anna.

“Why?”

“Why do you think?” Anna sounded tired suddenly. Exhausted. “If Martha told you everything, then you know what a bastard he was.”

“We know.”

“Then what else do you need to know?”

“What happened that night, Anna?”

Anna sighed, and ran a hand over her face. Instinct told Phryne that she wouldn’t try and lie. Like Martha, she was sick of it. “Martha and I had argued the day before.” Her voice was broken. “Martha said she was leaving, and I was so angry, and hurt, and scared. We don’t get on, we never have, but I didn’t know what would happen without her. I suppose I wasn’t thinking straight. I couldn’t think of another way out.”

“You killed Connolly to stop Martha from leaving.”

“And for Ben,” Anna nodded. “Martha was right. She was always bloody right. It would never have stopped. I think I knew it, I just didn’t want to believe it, but then she slammed it right in my face.” She lifted her face to Phryne’s, and Phryne saw the tears of hurt, and anger, and shame, and defiance. So similar, she thought, to Martha. “In the end it was easy. I waited until right before the fight, when he came by to see me and when I knew he would have had a drink. He seemed a bit…I don’t know. Dazed, I suppose, but I thought he’d just had more to drink than usual.”

Phryne caught Jack’s eye. Ben’s barbiturates were obviously strong.

“Ben had already been in to see me. I told him what I was going to do, and he panicked. He told me not to be so melodramatic, and that he’d talk to Jamie while the fight was going on. I followed Jamie when he left. Ben was waiting for him round the back, and I heard them starting to argue. Jamie was just threatening, as usual. And then he started laughing. He knew he had Ben caught.”

“That’s when you stabbed him.”

Anna nodded. “It was so easy,” she whispered. “I knew where. He didn’t know what was happening until it was too late. In and out. Like an uppercut.”

“And then what?”

“Ben took over.” She shook her head. “I couldn’t. I’d done it, but I’d never thought about what to do afterwards. All I could think about was ending it, for all of us.” She paused, taking a deep breath. “He took the knife from me, told me to go back to the gym and clean up, to go fight like nothing had happened. He said he would sort everything. So I did. I was shaking. I felt sick, but it was strange…” She looked at Phryne, almost imploring her to understand. “I felt euphoric too. Like I’d taken something, like I was high. I knew that Jamie had told Martha to throw the fight, and she had refused. All of a sudden I didn’t want to give her a choice. I’d just killed a man for her. So I cleaned up - there wasn’t that much blood really. Not as much as I expected. And I thrashed her.”

“You gave her a concussion.”

“It’s happened before. The other way around.”

“So then where did Ben go, Anna?”

“I honestly don’t know…you have to believe me.” She leaned forward, suddenly impassioned as she saw their disbelieving looks. “He must have come back here, because I found the knife back on the desk. He’d cleaned it for me. But he was gone. He didn’t leave a note, and I couldn’t find anything missing. I thought he’d just gone on a bender like he sometimes did, or that he had things to do after what had happened. But when he didn’t turn up the next day, I panicked. I’d done that for all of us, so that we could be together without living like that all the time, and I just wanted him home.”

“You haven’t heard from him since?”

“No.” Anna leaned back into the sofa again, her face filled with misery. “No, I haven’t.”

Phryne looked at Jack, who looked as resigned and sickened as she felt. These were the hardest, she thought; the cases where solving the crime left no happy ending, no neat ends tied up. She didn’t know, of course, but she suspected that Ben had cut and run. Panicked, and bailed on the family that had given everything for him. She knew that Jack would have his description circulated, that within a few hours every police force in the country would be alerted and that if he hadn’t already left the country he would probably be found, sooner or later, but it didn’t help her sense of despondency.

She hated leaving a case feeling like she could have done more.

Jack telephoned the police station, and Anna went without being handcuffed. There was no fight left in her, and as she walked out of the front door with Collins, her eyes straight ahead and devoid of emotion, Phryne couldn’t help thinking of her sister, back at Wardlow with Mac.

“What am I going to tell Martha, Jack?” she murmured as they watched Anna climb into the back of the police car, and she felt his hand close around hers. A gesture of comfort, of reassurance, of support. “What will happen to her?”

“She’ll be fine.” His fingers squeezed, gently. “I’m not going to charge her. She’s suffered enough.”

“She’s got her whole life to rebuild.”

“It could be the best thing that’s happened.” Jack settled his hat back on his head, and they walked slowly together back to the car. “This wasn’t much of a life.”

“I suppose not.” Phryne looked back at the house. Perhaps she was being fanciful, but she felt as if it seemed relieved. The walls seemed to glow in the dusk, and in an upstairs window, left open, a curtain danced. It was as over as it was ever going to be. “And she has Mac. I think they’ll make a go of it.”

“And she has you.” Jack smiled as he opened the car door for her. It was a genuine, fond smile, not one of his half-smiles that were merely hinted at around the corners of his mouth but a smile that lit up his eyes. “I think you’ve half-adopted her already.”

She laughed. It was true. “Well, what’s Mac’s is mine.” Her eyes teased him. “In a manner of speaking.”

“I hope Martha knows what she’s letting herself in for.”

“Perhaps you’d like to enlighten her one evening over dinner?” She tossed it out, a carefree invitation that belied the warm tingles in her stomach. “You’d be outnumbered, I’m afraid. Three to one.”

“I might not survive.”

“Do you want to?”

He laughed, his eyes deep and hot on hers as she climbed into the car. Shutting the door behind her, he leaned in through the window.

“Survive or come to dinner?”

“Either. Both.”

“I’ll let you know, Miss Fisher.”

She sighed. For one delicious moment, she had thought he was going to kiss her.

“I’ll let you know.”


	14. Chapter 14

The scene was the same, and yet so different. Jack leaning against the mantel, Mac relaxing in her favourite chair, drink in hand, Martha on the chaise. It was, she mused, almost an exact replica of the evening almost three weeks before, when they had brought Martha back from the gymnasium. Only this time there was no investigation. Instead, the parlour was filled with laughter and cocktails and the smells of a delicious dinner wafting from the kitchen. This time, Martha was not a suspect dropped into the middle of the family scene, but looked and felt as though she belonged.

Dot and Hugh had joined them for drinks before going to a late showing at the cinema, and Phryne watched, a smile on her face as she sipped her drink. Martha was evidently missing the ring, despite everything. She and Hugh were engaged in a detailed conversation - complete with demonstrations - of effective boxing techniques, while Dot looked on with the same sort of morbid fascination with which she viewed a crime scene. Jack, too, was watching them, his eyes catching hers every so often. Was it a challenge she saw in them? A tease, or a promise? She returned it with her own, each glance accompanied by a pleasant fizzing in her stomach that had nothing to do with the Old Fashioned in her hand.

“How are you doing?” She hadn’t had a chance to speak to Mac much over the past couple of weeks, and decided to nab her chance while her friend was refilling her glass at the drinks trolley. “I mean really doing.”

Mac smiled. She looked happy, Phryne thought. A little tired, and a little tentative about being happy, but happy nonetheless.

“Fine.” She looked over to where Hugh was trying to show Dot how to do a right hook without actually doing one. “Thank you for this, Phryne.”

“There’s nothing to thank me for.”

“It’s doing her good.”

“It’s doing all of us good.” Phryne broke off as the sofa erupted in laughter. “It seems Dot could use some work on her self defence.”

“She misses it.” A small, tender smile curved Mac’s lips as she watched Martha guiding Dot’s small fist towards Hugh, Dot’s other hand covering her eyes as she tried not to look and all of them still laughing. “She won’t consider going back to train somewhere else. Not yet, anyway. But messing about like this helps.”

Phryne nodded. She could understand the sense of loss, of not quite knowing what to do when something was very suddenly taken away, and she could also understand the need to bring some lightness into it, some laughter and friendly faces. Perhaps, in time, she thought, Martha would consider it.

“She would make a wonderful defence teacher for girls.”

“That’s what I said,” Mac nodded. “She’ll think about it, I think, along with going back to dancing. She just needs time.”

Phryne nodded. The bruises on Martha’s face and the scratches on her arms had healed completely, leaving no trace, but beneath the surface would hide a very different story. She could imagine, but she didn’t know. She could only guess at the tears, and the rage, and the grief that had been played out in Martha’s home, with only the four walls and Mac to witness them. She couldn’t count the number of nights spent crying, alone or not. She couldn’t grasp the full extent of the shame and disgust, and none of it was over yet. There would be a trial to face. A sentence. And they still hadn’t found Ben.

“Do you think they’ll ever find him?”

Phryne shook her head. She wouldn’t have said so to Martha, but she wouldn’t lie to Mac. “No. I think he’s long gone. Whether he’ll ever turn up again…who knows.”

Mac hissed softly through her teeth, and shook her head. “Bastard.”

But neither of them wanted to dwell on it. Tonight wasn’t a night for that. Tonight was all about the fun and the laughter, the smooth cocktails and delicious food. Later it would be about the whisky and the dancing, and she was damned if she wouldn’t get Jack to waltz. And then after that…

She clinked glasses with Mac.

“To partners and lovers.”

Mac raised a single eyebrow, smirking as she sipped. 

“Of all kinds.”

Phryne smiled.

“To family.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I do like to leave it open for a sequel.....


End file.
